In nonlinear optics we are frequently measuring the functional dependence of a physical parameter on light intensity. This immediately presents a problem, since by their nature real optical beams have a varying transverse intensity profile. Any nonlinear measurement will inherently be different at the center of the beam than it is at the edges. A spatially integrated whole-beam measurement must...

We demonstrate an all optical waveguide imprinted by a low power Laguerre Gaussian control laser beam using a coherent Raman process in warm atomic rubidium vapor. We show that the signal beam propagates with a small spot size over several diffraction lengths. We also show that the coupling efficiency of the signal beam into the waveguide varies linearly with the signal power.

The beam is often represented only by its position (mean) and the width (rms = root mean squared) of its distribution. To achieve these beam parameters in a noisy condition with high backgrounds, a Gaussian distribution with offset (4 parameters) is fitted to the measured beam distribution. This gives a very robust answer and is not very sensitive to background subtraction techniques. To get hi...

End pumped or longitudinally pumped solid-state lasers have proven to be very efficient sources. They differ from side pumped lasers, regardless of the nature of the pump, by the fact that the gain is concentrated in a very well defined region. Furthermore the gain exhibits a transverse profile directly related to the pump beam profile which induces new requirements on the relative sizes of the...

Computation of high frequency solutions to wave equations is important in many applications, and notoriously difficult in resolving wave oscillations. Gaussian beams are asymptotically valid high frequency solutions concentrated on a single curve through the physical domain, and superposition of Gaussian beams provides a powerful tool for generating more general high frequency solutions to PDEs...