Effects of Forced Airflow Cooling on Laser Beam Heating of Volume Bragg Gratings

S. Kaim[1], B. Anderson[1], G. Venus[1], J. Lumeau[1], V. Smirnov[2], B. Zeldovich[1], L. Glebov[1]
[1]CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
[2]OptiGrate Corp, Oviedo, FL, USA
Published in 2013

Forced airflow cooling of a Volume Bragg Grating heated by a laser beam was investigated by means of simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics®. In addition to air cooling of unrestricted airflow, a case of airflow directed by limiting glass plates was investigated. A number of temperature distributions and thermal deformations were obtained in simulations for different rates of airflows. Simulations proved to agree with experimental findings rather satisfactory, which makes them a good prediction tool for such type of research.