Saturation factors of pump absorption in solid-state lasers
Novel models for the saturation factors of absorption under optical pumping in solid-state lasers are derived, and these factors depend on the pumping scheme. We investigated the pump saturation effect in Nd:YVO/sub 4/ and found that the bleaching of pump absorption due to the depletion of a ground-state level in a direct pumping scheme was more effective than that in a conventional four-level pumping scheme. However, the saturation effect was recovered by lasing.