Compensation of thermally induced polarisation distortions in Faraday isolators

Two new Faraday isolator designs are proposed. They make it possible to com pensate partly for the depolarisation of radiation which occurs in magneto- optical elements because of the photoelastic effect caused by heating assoc iated with the absorption of laser radiation. Analytic and numerical compar isons of the new and traditional designs demonstrate a significant (by orde rs of magnitude) increase in the isolation ratio of the new isolators. The results obtained indicate that it should be possible to construct a Faraday isolator with the isolation ratio of 30 dB for laser radiation with an ave rage power of several kilowatts.