Influence of direct and cross-relaxation pumping processes on the output energy and thermal load of an Er:YAG laser.

The dependence of the output-energy efficiency and thermal load of an Er:YAG laser on the spectrum of exciting flash-lamp light has been measured. In particular, the influence of the direct and crossrelaxation pumping process has been studied. For pump pulses of 400 µs cross-relaxation pumping processes provide four times the efficiency and 1.5 times less thermal load normalized to fixed output energy.