title: Photoelastic lensing effect in Ti:sapphire crystal pumped by high-energy pulses.
abstract: We have built a setup with high temporal resolution to measure the very fast photoelastic lensing effect, which is on the scale of microseconds in a Ti:sapphire crystal pumped by very strong laser pulses (up to 5 J/cm2). The experimental results measured by this method and the real multimode beam profile taken by a CCD camera are applied to a three-dimensional crystal model to calculate one of the photoelastic constants of Ti:sapphire crystal, which is found to be p31=-0.03±0.01. This value is helpful to evaluate the photoelastic lensing effect in Ti:sapphire crystal for a laser beam polarized along the c axis, commonly used for laser amplification.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Science, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23185, USA. wzheng@email.wm.edu
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Gunter
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lüpke