A passively Q-switched diode pumped Yb:YAG microchip laser

A passively Q-switched diode pumped Yb:YAG microchip laser with Cr4+:YAG saturable absorber mirror is reported. The TEMoo laser pulses are obtained with 1,7-uJ pulse energy, 15-ns pulse width, 0.11-kW peak power, and a repetition rate of 2.2 kHz at 1049 nm. The doped concentration and dimension of Yb:YAG microchip crystal are 10 at.-% and 5×0.6 mm2, respectively.     

Generation of 170-fs Laser Pulses at 1053nm by a Passively Mode-Locked Yb:YAG Laser

A novel method is developed to obtain 1.05μm laser operation with a Yb：YAG laser. By using a Yb：YAG crystal with proper length and doping concentration, a femtosecond Yb： YAG laser is realized at the central wavelength of 1053nm. The measured pulse duration and spectral bandwidth （FWHM） are 170fs and 7nm; the repetition rate is 80 MHz. Under a power pump of 2 W, an average mode-locking power of 180mW is achieved.     

Diode-Pumped Passively Q-Switched Yb：YAG Microchip Laser with a GaAs as Saturable Absorber

A passively Q-switched Yb: YAG microchip laser has been constructed by using a doped GaAs as the saturable absorber as well as the output coupler. At 13.5 W of pump power the device produces high-quality 3.4μJ 52ns pulses at 1030nm with a pulse repetition rate of 7.8 kHz in a TEM00-mode.     

Influence of air pressure on mechanical effect of laser plasma shock wave

The influence of air pressure on mechanical effect of laser plasma shock wave in a vacuum chamber produced by a Nd:YAG laser has been studied. The laser pulses with pulse width of 10ns and pulse energy of about 320mJ at 1.06$\mu $m wavelength is focused on the aluminium target mounted on a ballistic pendulum, and the air pressure in the chamber changes from $2.8\times 10^{3}$ to 1.01$\times $10$^{5 }$Pa. The experimental results show that the impulse coupling coefficient changes as the air pressure and the distance of the target from focus change. The mechanical effects of the plasma shock wave on the target are analysed at different distances from focus and the air pressure.     

Low Timing Jitter and Tunable Dual-Wavelength Picosecond Pulse Generation from a Fabry--Pérot Laser Diode with External Injection

A novel scheme to generate tunable dual-wavelength optical pulses with low timing jitter at arbitrary repetition rates is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The pulses are generated from a gain-switched Fabry-Pérot laser diode with two external cw beams for injection seeding simultaneously. The cw light is generated by two independent distributed feedback laser diodes, and their wavelengths can be tuned independently by two temperature controllers. The dual-wavelength pulses with the pulse width of 57 ps, the timing jitter of 340 fs, are obtained. The sidemode-suppression ratio of the output pulses is better than 23dB over a 10-nm wavelength tuning range.     

Diode end-pumped self-Q-switched and mode-locked Nd,Cr：YAG /KTP green laser

We first experimentally demonstrate a laser-diode end-pumped self-Q-switched and mode-locked Nd,Cr:YAG green laser with a KTP crystal as the intra-cavity frequency doubler. The device produces an average output power of 680 mW at 532 nm. The corresponding pulse width of the Q-switched envelope of the green laser is 170±20 ns. The mode-locked pulses have a repetition rate of approximately 183 MHz and the average pulse duration is estimated to be around sub-nanosecond. It is found that the intra-cavity frequency doubling greatly improves the modulation depth and stability of the mode-locked pulses within the Q-switched envelope.     

Pulsed pumped Yb-doped fiber amplifier at low repetition rate

A pulsed pumped Yb-doped double-clad fiber (DCF) master-oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) at low repetition rate is reported. Seeded by a passive Q-switched Nd:YAG microchip laser, the fiber amplifier can generate 167-kW peak-power and 0.83-ns duration pulses at 200-Hz repetition rate. Because of the pulsed pump approach, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and the spurious lasing between pulses are well avoided, and the repetition rate can be set freely from single-shot to 1 kHz. Peak power scaling limitations that arise from the fiber facet damage are discussed.     

Generation of Red Light Femtosecond Pulses from an Intra-Cavity Frequency-Doubled Cr^4＋： Forsterite Laser

We demonstrate the generation of red light femtosecond laser pulses from an intra-cavity frequency-doubled Cr^4＋ ：forsterite laser. An average output power of 75 mW is obtained at the central wavelength of 647nm with a pulse width of 55 fs by inserting a 500μm-thick BBO crystal in the laser cavity. The bandwidth of the spectrum of second harmonic pulses is 9 nm, corresponding to a time-bandwidth product of 0.355.     

Generation of sub-100-fs pulses from a diode-pumped Yb:Y_3ScAl_4O_(12) ceramic laser

We experimentally demonstrate the generation of sub-100-fs pulses from a diode-pumped passively mode-locked Yb:Y_3 ScAl_4O_(12)(Yb:YSAG) ceramic laser. Stable mode-locked pulses as short as 96 fs at the central wavelength of 1052 nm with a repetition rate of ～102 MHz are obtained. The laser has a maximum average output power of 51 mW. To the best of our knowledge, these are so far the shortest pulses and the first demonstration of sub-100-fs pulses obtained from the mode-locked Yb:YSAG ceramic lasers.     

Comparison of spectroscopic properties of Yb:YAP and YbiYAG crystals

The Yb:YAG and Yb:YAP crystals have been grown by Czochralski method. The absorption spectra and the fluorescence spectra of Yb:YAG and Yb:YAP crystals have been investigated. It is shown that the Yb:YAG crystal has better laser properties and smaller threshold power than Yb:YAP crystal. In addition, the absorption cross-section of the Yb:YAP crystal is 2.16 times of that of the Yb:YAG crystal, so laser diode pumped Yb:YAG lasing can be easily realized. Because YAP single crystal is anisotropic, it is provided with polarization characteristics.     

Generation of Very Energetic Ions from Intense Femtosecond Laser Interactions with Rare Gas Clusters in a Dense Jet

Very energetic ions, which are detected by time-of-flight spectrometry with maximum energy up to 1.3 MeV and an average energy of 68keV, are generated in the explosion of large Xe clusters in a dense jet irradiated with a high-intensity (～10^16 W/cm2) 50fs laser pulse from a Ti:sapphire TW laser at 79Ohm wavelength. The interaction of intense laser pulses with a jet of argon clusters is also performed and high average ion energies are observed. The dependence of energy of the ions on the gas backing pressure is examined, suggesting that the results are consistent with the absorption efficiency of the laser energy by the cluster plasmas.     

Measurement of Ultrashort Laser Pulse Width in a Wide Spectrum Range Using Dimethyl Sulfoxide by Optical Kerr Effect Technique

We illustrate that applying the optical Kerr effect technique to dimethyl sulfoxide （DMSO） can determine the width of laser pulses in a wide spectrum range that is transparent. Different from many other simple molecular liquids, such CS2, and toluene, DMSO responds to both 130 fs 800 nm laser pulses and 248 fs 400 nm laser pulses with electronic motions only. Therefore, the observed signal as a function of time reflects the temporal distribution of the intensity. We verify our illustration by both the autocorrelation technique and spectra analysis.     

Pre-pumped passively Q-switched Nd:YAG/Cr:YAG microchip laser

A pre-pumped passively Q-switched Nd:YAG/Cr: YAG microchip laser is demonstrated with a peak power of 7.5 kW at pulse repetition rate of serveral kilohertzs. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) is 734 ps, and the pulse energy is 5.5 μJ with a fundamental spatial mode. In this system, the pre-pumped microchip laser of Nd: YAG/Cr: YAG wafer which is bonded through the thermal-bonding technique has achieved a time jitter value of 12 μs and a Q-switched amplitude instability of 1.26% (1δ) through the pre-pumped modulation technique.     

Effect of Time-Dependent Ionization on Propagation of a Few-Cycle Circularly Polarized Laser Pulse in Two-Level Medium

Influence of multiphoton ionization on the propagation and spectrum of few-cycle circularly （elliptically） polarized laser pulses in an open two-level medium （two-level plus continuum model） is investigated based on the conventional two-level model proposed by Slavcheva and Hess （Phys. Rev. A 72 （2005） 053804）, and the propagation dynamics of an arbitrary elliptically polarized laser pulse is reduced into that of right and left circularly polarized laser pulses. When the laser intensity is high enough to cause ionization, there are significant impacts of ionization on the pulse reshaping and on the higher order spectral components, and the impacts for the open two-level model are different from those for the dosed two-level model.     

Observation of Atomic Emission Enhancement by fs-ns Dual-Pulse Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

An experiment of a 500-fs KrF laser pulse incident upon a high density supersonic O2 gas jet synchronously with an ns frequency-doubled Nd：YAG laser pulse is performed in orthogonal configuration. Significant atomic emission enhancement of over forty-fold is observed with an optical multi-channel analyser. The enhancement effect is probably attributed to the different ionization mechanisms between fs and ns laser pulses.     

Measuring Carrier-Envelope Phase of Few-Cycle Laser Pulses Using High-Order Above-Threshold Ionization Photoelectrons

We experimentally demonstrate the measurement of carrier-envelope phase of few-cycle laser pulses. We have built a stereo above-threshold ionization setup. The photoelectron energy spectra of high-order above-threshold ionization are measured in both the left and right directions in the linearly polarized laser fields. It is shown that the left-right asymmetry of the spectra is dependent on carrier-envelope phase of few-cycle laser pulses. Two asymmetry parameters from the low-energy and high-energy regions at the above-threshold ionization plateau map a phase ellipse, in which the points indicate the absolute value of carrier-envelope phase. We have calibrated the phase ellipse by comparison with the semiclassical calculation. This setup allows us to determine the value of the absolute phase of few-cycle laser pulses.     

Theoretical and experimental investigations of quasi-continuous wave diode array side-pumped Yb＇YAG slab laser

An analytical model of quasi-continuous wave (quasi-CW) diode array side-pumped slab laser for Yb:YAG oscillator in long-pulse free-running has been developed based on the CW model. In this model we first introduce a new parameter, pump pulse width, and make the model available for use in the quasi-CW model. We also give an analytical equation of laser delay time to calculate the laser pulse width. A detailed model is also presented for a new structure laser design, taking account of the geometry of Yb:YAG slab. A quasi-CW diode array side-pumped Yb:YAG slab laser is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Experiments yield a quasi-CW output energy up to 20.36 mJ with the laser pulse width of 654.55 μs at 1049 nm when the diode arrays operate at 25 Hz and 1 ms pulse width. The crystal dimensions are 3 mm×8 mm×1 mm and the doping density is 10 at.%. The experimental results are in good agreement with the predictions of the theoretical model.     

Generation of Helical and Axial Magnetic Fields by the Relativistic Laser Pulses in Under—dense Plasma：Three—Dimensional Particle—in—Cell Simulation

The quasi-static magnetic fields created in the interaction of relativistic laser pulses with under-dense plasmas have been investigated by three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation.The relativistic ponderomotive force can drive and intense electron current in the laser propagation direction,which is responsible for the generation of a helical magnetic field.The axial magnetic field results from a difference bean of wave-wave,which drives a solenoidal current.In particular,the physical significance of the kinetic model for the generation of the axial magnetic field is discussed.     

Laser-Diode Pumped Passive Q-Switched Laser with Quick Tunable Pulse-Width Capability

A laser-diode pumped passive Q-switched Nd:YAG/Cr~(4+):YAG laser with quick tunable pulse-width capability is studied and experimentally demonstrated. By focusing the auxiliary controlling laser beam onto a Cr~(4+):YAG crystal and thereby changing the initial transmission of the Cr~(4+):YAG crystal, laser pulses with different pulse widths can be achieved. The obtained laser pulse width is tunable in the range of 550–1492 ps with a fixed cavity length of 7 mm. The laser can be used to achieve different pulse widths between two pulses in the range of sub-nanosecond to a few tens of nanoseconds.     

Diode-pumped passively mode-locked femtosecond Yb：（Y0.9La0.1）2O3 ceramic laser

We experimentally demonstrate a diode-pumped passively mode-locked femtosecond laser with Yb 3+ -doped yttrium lanthanum oxide ceramic. Mode-locking is achieved by using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror, and intracavity dispersion is compensated by a pair of SF6 prisms. Laser pulses as short as 357 fs at a central wavelength of 1 075 nm are obtained. The maximum average output power is 670 mW under 4.5 W of pumping power with a slope efficiency of 20%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse generated from Yb-doped yttrium lanthanum oxide ceramic lasers with a sub-500 fs pulse duration.