1.57 times diffraction-limit high-energy laser based on a Nd:YAG slab amplifier and an adaptive optics system

In this Letter, a 116-actuator deformable mirror(DM) was used to correct the wavefront distortion in a 10.7 J,10 Hz neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet(Nd:YAG) slab amplifier. By applying a pump-light homogenizer to transform the 3 × 1 near-field beam array into an integrated beam, the beam quality was greatly improved from 5.54 times diffraction limit(TDL) to 1.57 TDL after being corrected by the DM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation on beam quality control of an arrayed near-field beam in high-energy diode-pumped solid-state lasers.     

516 mW,nanosecond Nd:LuAG laser Q-switched by gold nanorods

Q-switched operation of an Nd:LuAG laser using gold nanorods(GNRs) as the saturable absorber(SA) is reported, which also produces the highest average power among the nanosecond Nd-doped Q-switched lasers by GNRs-based SA. The applied GNRs are prepared using a seed-mediated growth method and then dropped onto the quartz substrate to fabricate the SA. The average power of the Q-switched laser is 516 mW with the shortest pulse duration of 606.7 ns and the repetition rate of 265.1 kHz.