Brewster-oriented passive Q-switch intracavity optical parametric oscillator

The behaviour of passively Q-switched solid-state lasers containing intracavity optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) is described, and a model to optimize this system‘s performance is developed. Meanwhile, an Nd:YAG laserpumped KTiOPO4 (KTP) intracavity OPO for eye safe laser output is studied experimentally. A Brewster-oriented bis-(4-dimethylaminodithiobenzil)-nickel (BDN) dye film is employed in laser cavity, which plays the double role of a passive Q-switch and a Brewster plate, to Q-switch the light to increase its intensity and polarize the light so that the polarization plane of fundamental irradiation is perpendicular to the Z-axis of KTP serving as the OPO nonlinear crystal, thereby providing type Ⅱ phase matching conditions to generate 1.572μm eye-safe signal laser. Eye-safe signal radiations of 6.6mJ per pulse at 1.572μm wavelength and pulse width as narrow as 6.0ns (FWHM) were obtained. Peak power was up to 1.1MW.     

Q-Switching Pulse Generation with Thulium-Doped Fiber Saturable Absorber

Q-switched pulsed laser systems operating in the eye-safe wavelength region （λ〉 1.4 μm） are promis- ing for applications such as light detection and ranging （lidar）, differential absorption lidar, optical communi- cation, sensor and instrumentations. Fiber lasers are particularly attractive for such applications due to the fact that the beam quality can be independent of output power and they can be robustly engineered. There is an increasing interest in Q-switched erbium- doped fiber lasers （EDFLs）, which can be generated by using either active or passive techniques. Com- pared with the actively Q-switched ones, passively Q- switched EDFLs have attracted much attention for their advantages of compactness, low cost, flexibility and simplicity of design. Different kinds of saturable absorbers, such as the transition metal-doped crys- tals and semiconductor quantum-well structures, have been applied to realize Q-switched EDFLs.How- ever, when they are used in the laser cavity, additional alignment devices, such as lens, mirrors or U-bench units, have to be applied. This may increase the in- sertion loss and the complexity of the laser cavity.     

In-Band Pumped High Power Ho：YAG Ceramic Laser by a Tm：YLF Laser

High-power 2 μm lasers are promising candidates for a variety of applications including remote sens- ing, wind lidar, and medicine as well as mid- infrared generation via pumping of optical parametric oscillators. Due to the advantages of low quantum defects and high efficiency, resonantly pumped Ho- doped lasers have attracted great attention. Ho：YAG single crystals have also been widely studied to ob- tain cw and Q-switched laser operation in the 2 μm wavelengths range.     

MXene Ti_3C_2T_x saturable absorber for pulsed laser at 1.3 μm

The excellent optical properties of MXene provide new opportunities for short-pulse lasers. A diode-pumped passively Q-switched laser at 1.3 μm wavelength with MXene Ti_3C_2T_x as saturable absorber was achieved for the first time. The stable passively Q-switched laser has 454 ns pulse width and 162 kHz repetition rate at 4.5 W incident pumped power. The experimental results show that the MXene Ti_3C_2T_x saturable absorber can be used as an optical modulator to generate short pulse lasers in a solid-state laser field.     

Passively Q-switched Nd:GdVO_4 solid-state lasers with stabilized repetition rates

Pulsed solid-state lasers in the near infrared region wereof a growing interest due to their potential applica-tions in the scientific, medical, industrial, and militarysystems[1,2]. Especially, passively Q-switched diode-pumped solid-state lasers could offer good compact-ness and robustness that were well-matched to a varietyof applications such as micro-surgeon, laser ranging,injecting seeds for amplifiers, remote sensing, and soforth[3,4]. It was well-known that the laser repetitionfrequenc…     

Efficient Laser-Diode End-Pumped Passively Q-Switched Mode-Locked Yb：LYSO Laser Based on SESAM

We report an efficient Q-switched laser action based on a semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors （SESAMs） as passively Q-switched laser starter and a Yb：LYSO alloyed crystal as gain material pumped directly by 974nm InGaAs laser diodes. The output pulse duration is measured to be about 7μs, while the average power and the repetition rate of the pulse chain are about 0.92 W and 6.2 kHz, respectively, under 12.5 W absorbed pumping power. The Q-switched mode-locked pulse train is also observed in this setup. The laser performance shows that Yb：LYSO is a promising laser gain medium for laser-diode pumped compact solid-state lasers.     

Contrastive study of two SESAMs for passive mode-locking in Nd:YVO_4 laser with low pump power

Two semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs), of which one is coated with 50% reflection film on the top and the other is not, were contrastively studied in passively mode-locked solid-state lasers which were pumped by low output power laser diode (LD). Experiments have shown that reducing the modulation depth of SESAM by coating partial reflection film, whose reflectivity is higher than that between SESAM and air interface, is an effective method to get continuous wave (CW) mode-locking instead of Q-switched mode-locking (QML) in low power pumped solid-state lasers. A simple Nd:YVO4 laser pumped by low power LD, in which no water-cooling system was used, could obtain CW mode-locking by the 50% reflector coated SESAM with average output power of ~ 20 mW.     

Controllable Passively Q-Switched Laser

We present a novel kind of pulsed laser named controllable passively Q-switched laser (CPQL). A CPQL of Nd:YV04 with Cr:YAG as saturable absorber was demonstrated and studied as an example of the kind of pulsed lasers. In CPQL, as the actively controlling signal, a diode laser beam was focused onto the saturable absorber in the resonant cavity of the passively Q-switched laser (PQL) and was absorbed by the absorber to realize the active control of the CPQL. The characters of the CPQL output laser pulses, such as generation time, repetition rate, pulse width, peak power and energy per pulse, can be controlled by the operator. The CPQLs possess theadv antages of both passively Q-switched laser and actively Q-switched laser. Because of their compactness, low cost and controllability, the CPQLs will find wide applications in many fields.     

Pulse width reduction in diode-pumped, doubly Q-switched Nd:GdVO4/KTP green laser

Using both acoustic-optic (AO) Q-switch and GaAs saturable absorber, a diode-pumped doubly Q-switched Nd:GdVO4/KTP green laser is realized. This laser can generate a shorter and more symmetric pulse in comparison with purely AO and passively Q-switched lasers.     

Erbium-doped CW and Q-switched fiber ring laser with fiber grating Michelson interferometer

The band-pass characteristic of fiber grating Michelson interferometer is analyzed, which acts as bothband-pass filter and Q-switch. An erbium-doped fiber ring laser based on fiber grating Michelsoninterferometer is implemented for producing single longitudinal mode CW operation with 5 MHz spectrallinewidth and up to 6 mW output power. In Q-switched operation, stable fiber laser output pulses withrepetition rate of 800 Hz, pulse width of 0.6 μs, average power of 1.8 mW and peak power of 3.4 W aredemonstrated. The peak power and average power of the Q-switched pulses are varied with the repetitionrate.