Thermal distortions of electro-optic crystal for high average power laser systems

Thermally induced birefringence and optical distortion in electro-optic slab switches were analyzed, and the influence of distribution of intensity on thermal effects was discussed. The distribution of temperature increment, thermal stress, optical distortion and depolarization were calculated in the case of different intensity profiles (Gaussian and uniform) with KDP crystal as an example. The results indicate that the influence of nonuniformity of a light beam is significant on optical distortion and depolarization. For Gaussian light beams the depolarization is considerably lower because they mitigate the temperature gradients on the edge of the light beam, while the optical distortion is considerably larger against the spatially uniform light beam because Gaussian light beams have larg