ABSTRACT
An actively Q-switched eye-safe orthogonally-polarized dual-wavelength intracavity Raman laser was demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The gain balanced dual-wavelength operation at 1314 and 1321 nm within an in-band pumped Nd:YLF laser was realized by slightly titling the cavity mirrors. Owing to the KGW bi-axial properties, two sets of simultaneous orthogonally-polarized dual-wavelength Raman lasers at 1470, 1490 nm and 1461, 1499 nm were achieved by simply rotating the KGW crystal for 90°, respectively. With an incident pump power of 30 W and an optimized pulse repetition frequency of 5 kHz, the maximum dual-wavelength Raman output powers of 2.6 and 2.4 W were obtained with the pulse widths of 5.8 and 6.3 ns, respectively, corresponding to the peak powers up to 89.7 and 76.5 kW.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate an 806 nm laser diode end-pumped continuous-wave (CW) and actively Q-switched (AQS) orthogonally-polarized dual-wavelength Nd:YLF laser operating at 1314 and 1321 nm. Benefitting from the small difference of the stimulated emission cross sections at 1314 and 1321 nm in Nd:YLF crystal, the power equalized emissions at both wavelengths were achieved by simply titling the output coupler. A maximum CW output power of 9.2 W was obtained with the incident pump power of 32.5 W, giving an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of approximately 28% and a slope efficiency of approximately 33%. Furthermore, active Q-switching was realized by inserting a Brewster-cut acousto optic modulator. For an incident pump power of 30 W, this oscillator delivered an average power of 6.5 W at a pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 20 kHz, and a pulse energy of 2.6 mJ with a peak power of approximately 72 kW at a PRF of 1 kHz.
ABSTRACT
We first demonstrate the laser performance of a Cr2+:CdSe passively Q-switched (PQS) 2.09 µm Ho: YAG laser resonantly pumped by a thulium-doped fiber laser. The maximum output pulse energy of 1.766 mJ, corresponding to a repetition frequency of 685 Hz, was obtained with a pulse duration of 15.4 ns. The pulse peak power was 114.7 kW, while the PQS efficiency was 21.45% against the continuous-wave output. The laser wavelength in the PQS operation was precisely measured to be 2090.2 nm.
ABSTRACT
A theoretical method was proposed to compensate the burst envelope distortion in a solid-state master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) system operating in burst mode at an intra-burst repetition rate of 40 MHz. Arbitrary envelope shapes were achieved at inter-burst repetition rate of 100 kHz with 40 pulses in the burst, showing excellent agreement with the calculated ones. This is the first demonstration of arbitrary burst envelope without an adaptive feedback loop in a solid-state laser system. The maximum pulse energy of 100 µJ was achieved at inter-burst repetition rate of 40 kHz, with 10 pulses in the burst.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we demonstrated a hybrid master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) laser with high peak power and widely tunable pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and pulse duration. The first-stage solid-state amplifier was carefully designed to keep good beam quality and supply high gain simultaneously. The maximum peak power of 760 kW was achieved with average power of 42 W, PRF of 50 kHz, pulse duration of 1.1 ns, and near-diffraction limited beam quality. The MOPA laser covers a broad tunable temporal range with 1-100 ns for pulse duration and 50 kHz-1 MHz for PRF. Moreover, we experimentally and numerically figure out that Nd:YVO4 crystal behaves as if continuous-wave (CW) amplification takes place when PRF is larger than 30 kHz.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrated the active shaping for a solid-state Nd:YVO4 amplifier with a high average gain of 39.2 dB. The average output power was 8.3 W with respect to the input power of 1 mW. A range of common and useful pulse shapes was generated at the final output. In addition, a very flat square pulse was produced with a root-mean-square less than 3% in amplitude. A numerical method was proposed to realize active shaping without an experimental test for the Nd:YVO4 amplifier, showing great potential for the design of lasers with both high peak power (>100 kW) and a desired pulse shape.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, the performance of an end-pumped laser amplifier was experimentally studied by adjusting the pumping wavelength of a laser diode. An interesting phenomenon was observed: that the gain would decrease with an increase in absorbed pump power. The scaled output power of 0.3 at. % doped 20 mm long Nd:YVO4 crystal decreased from 0.48 to 0.2 W when the absorbed pump power increased from 17.5 to 17.8 W. Theoretical analysis was demonstrated according to our previous model. The long crystal length is the main reason for the observed phenomenon. This phenomenon could be utilized to enhance amplifier gain and improve thermal performance, including the maximal temperature and thermal stress of the crystal.
ABSTRACT
We present a compact high-power 780 nm frequency-stabilized diode laser with a power of as high as 2.825 W, corresponding to an estimated overall efficiency of 38.5%. The tapered amplifier (TPA) gain was about 24.5 dB, which was basically consistent with the simulation results. The beam quality factor was M2<1.72. The core feature of the system was stabilizing the frequency of the narrowband semiconductor TPA system with the matured saturated absorption spectrum technique. The laser frequency was stabilized against mode hops for a period of >4200 s with a frequency fluctuation around 6.7×10-10 within 1 s of the observation period, and the linewidth was no more than 0.95 MHz. The laser performance indicates that the current frequency-stabilized semiconductor laser has great potential in certain conditions that require several watts of output power.
ABSTRACT
We first demonstrate the laser performance of a compact 2.06 µm Ho: YLF laser resonantly pumped by a broadband fiber-coupled diode. In continuous-wave (CW) operation, maximum output power of 1.63 W, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 89.2%, was obtained with a near diffraction-limited beam quality. In actively Q-switched operation, maximum pulse energy of 1.1 mJ was achieved at the repetition frequency of 100 Hz. The minimum pulse duration was 43 ns. The performance in both the CW and Q-switched regimes indicates that the current fiber-coupled diode in-band pumped Ho: YLF laser has great potential in certain conditions that require several watts of output power or several millijoules of short pulse energy.
Subject(s)
Electrical Equipment and Supplies , Lasers, Semiconductor , Lasers, Solid-State , Optical FibersABSTRACT
In this paper, we compare pulse parameters in two end-pumped passively Q-switched lasers by increasing the boundary temperature of the laser crystal. For the Nd:YAG/Cr:YAG laser, the pulse energy at 1 kHz increased from 12.4 to 21 µJ when the boundary temperature increased from 20°C to 120°C, while the pulse width decreased by 1.2 times. For the Nd:YVO4 passively Q-switched laser using Cr:YAG as the saturable absorber, the pulse energy at 100 Hz increased from 5.45 to 24.5 µJ when the boundary temperature increased from 26°C to 113°C, while the pulse width decreased by 2.4 times. An improved model based on the rate equations was introduced to analyze the large variation of pulse energy when heating the Nd:YVO4 crystal.
ABSTRACT
A high repetition rate optical parametric oscillator (OPO) generating an idler laser with a wavelength as long as 4.0 µm at 200 and 400 kHz was demonstrated in this paper. The OPO was pumped by a master oscillator power amplifier structure fiber laser with excellent characteristics. The pump pulse from the fiber laser had a steep leading edge, which was theoretically proved to improve the OPO's performance, compared with the Gaussian pump pulse. A homemade periodically poled magnesium-oxide-doped lithium niobate crystal with a grating period of 29 µm was employed in our experiment. By optimizing the resonator, 2.75 and 1.67 W idler lasers were finally achieved at repetition rates as high as 200 and 400 kHz, respectively, with a wavelength as long as 4.0 µm. The conversion efficiencies were 12.03% and 7.31%, respectively.