Topic：Conventional Laser Cavities

Lecturer：Hend Sroor

Invited by：Zhan Qiwen

Date：Oct.29, 11am-12am

Place：Rm 946, OECE Building

Abstract：Conventional laser cavities are designed to produce the fundamental Gaussian mode. However, this mode is not always ideally suited to the application at hand. Structured light modes promise infinite degrees of freedom in which information can be encoded for optical communications; tighter focusing spots for trapping and tweezing micron particles, etc. Typically, these structured modes are generated by reshaping the Gaussian beam outside the laser cavity. However, it is more efficient to place the laser beam shaping elements inside the laser resonator to produce structured modes. In this talk I will discuss the controlled generation of different classes of structured modes from inside laser resonators, the tools to quantitatively measure the purity of the structured modes, and the effect of amplification on their purity.

Lecturer Resume：Hend is currently a final year PhD student at University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her research focuses on intra-cavity beam shaping in solid state laser resonators. Hend holds two Master’s degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and Cairo University. She earned a diploma in Laser Interaction with Matter from National Institute of Laser Enhanced Sciences (NILES) and a BSc in General Physics from Menofia University in Egypt. One of her contributions involves the design and implementation of the first intracavity controlled generation of fractal modes and the production of Higher-Order Poincare eigenmodes with metamaterial inside an optical parametric oscillator.