Quantitative measurement of thermal lensing in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser by use of digital holographic interferometry.

Thermal lensing in diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser has been measured quantitatively using digital holographic interferometry. A series of holograms, carrying the information of the laser rod under different pump currents, are recorded with a CCD and reconstructed numerically. The optical path difference induced by the thermal lensing and the corresponding evolution process under different currents are obtained accordingly. Further, the thermal lensing diopters, induced aberrations, and its Zernike coefficients are calculated. The proposed method can be applied in the thermal lensing measurement and the optimization design of a laser resonator.