Resonantly pumped single frequency Er:YAG laser at 1645 nm

An efficient and single frequency Er:YAG laser pumped by an MGo:PPLN laser locked at 1532 nm with double F-P etalons was reported. The Er:YAG laser operated at 1645 nm, 550 mW of 1645 nm output was achieved under total incident pump power of 7 W. Using the etalons, 45 mW single frequency 1645.1 nm laser was achieved.     

6.1 W single frequency laser output at 1645 nm from a resonantly pumped Er:YAG nonplanar ring oscillator

A monolithic 1645 nm Er:YAG nonplanar ring oscillator (NPRO) resonantly pumped by a 1532 nm fiber laser is demonstrated. For reducing the energy-transfer upconversion effect, a 0.5% doped Er:YAG nonplanar crystal was used. An up to 6.1 W single frequency laser output at 1645 nm was obtained, with a slope efficiency of 55.2% and an optical efficiency of 48.0%. The linewidth of the Er:YAG NPRO was 14.4 kHz.     

Highly efficient in-band pumped Er:YAG laser with 60 W of output at 1645 nm

A high-power Er:YAG laser that is in-band pumped by a high-power cladding-pumped erbium-ytterbium codoped fiber laser operating at 1532 nm is reported. The Er:YAG laser produced 60.3 W of continuous-wave output at 1645.3 nm in a beam with M2 approximately equal to 3 for 82 W of incident pump power and 20 W of TEM00 output with M2 < 1.2 for 32.4 W of incident pump power. The slope efficiency with respect to incident pump power at pump powers of >20 W was approximately 81%. In the Q-switched mode of operation, a slightly modified resonator configuration incorporating an electro-optic Q switch produced pulses of approximately 4 mJ energy and approximately 100 ns (FWHM) duration, corresponding to a peak power of approximately 42 kW at a repetition rate of 1 kHz for an incident pump power of 16.8 W. The prospects for further improvement in continuous-wave and Q-switched performance are discussed.     

In-band pumped Er:YAG ceramic laser with 11 W of output power at 1645 nm

We report on a high power polycrystalline Er:YAG ceramic laser in-band pumped by a cladding-pumped Er, Yb fiber laser wavelength locked at 1532 nm with a volume Bragg grating. Using 1.0 at % Er³⁺-doped ceramic as the gain medium and an output coupler of 10% transmission, the laser had a threshold pump power of ∼1.5 W and generated 11 W of continuous-wave output at 1645 nm for 23.3 W of incident pump power at 1532 nm, corresponding to a slope efficiency with respect to incident pump power of 51%.     

Q-switched Er:YAG lasers resonantly pumped by Erbium fiber laser

The study describes efficient, acousto-optic Q-switching of Er:YAG laser at the 1645 nm eye-safe wavelength. For longitudinal pumping at wavelength 1532 nm, linear-polarized 10 W Erbium fiber laser radiation was used. The investigated Er:YAG crystals were 25 and 40 mm long and their Erbium concentration was 0.20 and 0.25%, respectively. For giant pulse generation, a fused silica acousto-optic modulator was inserted inside the Er:YAG laser oscillator. For a maximum incident pump power of 7.95 W, pulse energy up to 4.1 mJ was generated with pulse duration 34 ns at 500-Hz repetition rate; the corresponding peak power was 119 kW.     

Highly efficient Tm:YAG ceramic laser resonantly pumped at 1617 nm

We report on a highly efficient polycrystalline Tm:YAG ceramic laser in-band pumped by an Er:YAG laser at 1617 nm. Lasing characteristics of 4.0 and 6.0 at.%Tm(3+)-doped YAG ceramics were investigated and compared. With an output coupler of 10% transmission, a maximum output power of 7.3 W was obtained at 2015 nm under 12.8 W of incident pump power, corresponding to a slope efficiency with respect to incident pump power of 62.3%.     

Efficient 1645-nm Er:YAG laser

We report a resonantly fiber-laser-pumped Er:YAG laser operating at the eye-safe wavelength of 1645 nm, exhibiting 43% optical efficiency and 54% incident slope efficiency and emitting 7-W average power when repetitively Q switched at 10 kHz. To our knowledge, this is the best performance (conversion efficiency and average power) obtained from a bulk solid-state Q-switched erbium laser. At a 1.1-kHz pulse repetition frequency the laser produces 3.4-mJ pulses with a corresponding peak power of 162 kW. Frequency doubling to produce 822.5-nm, 4.7-kW pulses at 10 kHz was performed to demonstrate the laser's utility.     

Narrowband Er:YAG nonplanar ring oscillator at 1645 nm

We report 1645 nm narrowband operation of a monolithic Er:YAG nonplanar ring oscillator resonantly pumped at 1532 nm. Unidirectional cw power up to 0.5 W was obtained with a measured linewidth of 21 kHz.     

Diode-pumped,narrow-linewidth,linearly polarized,passively Q-switched 1645 nm Er:YAG laser

We demonstrate a narrow-linewidth linearly polarized 1645 nm Er:YAG laser, directly diode-pumped by a fibercoupled continuous-wave laser diode at 1532 nm. Passive Q-switching is realized by a few-layer graphene saturable absorber. A maximum polarized average output power of 3.13 W is achieved at 23.28 W incident pump power. A pulse energy of as much as 58.8 μJ and pulse width of 4.21 μs are yielded at a 53.2 k Hz pulse repetition rate. The spectrum and linewidth of the output beams are measured to be 1645.34 and 0.05 nm, respectively.This laser can be useful in the detection of atmosphere pollutants.     

Nd:YAG laser pumped at 946 nm

A Nd:YAG laser crystal was pumped at 946 nm and lased at 1064 nm. This pump-lase format was investigated in order to reduce the quantum defect between the pump and laser photons as compared to other pump schemes of this material. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first realization of this scheme. A room temperature absorption coefficient and linewidth of approximately 0.075 cm(-1) and approximately 1 nm for 1% at. Nd(+3) concentrations were measured for the 946 nm absorption line. Those parameters impose both narrow-bandwidth pumping and a long absorption path. By increasing the laser crystal temperature above room temperature, the absorption cross sections at 946 and 938 nm increase due to enhanced thermal population of the upper energy level of the ground manifold. The possibility of exploiting this phenomenon to enhance the pump absorption is also discussed.     

1064 nm Nd:YAG laser intracavity pumped at 946 nm

We present for the first time a Nd:YAG laser emitting at 1064 nm intracavity pumped by a 946 nm diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser. A 885 nm laser diode is used to pump the first Nd:YAG crystal emitting at 946 nm, and the second Nd:YAG laser emitting at 1064 nm intracavity pumped at 946 nm. We achieved an output power of 7.97 W at 1064 nm for an absorbed pump power at 946 nm of 9.55 W, corresponding to an optical efficiency of 83.4%. The beam quality M² quality factor is about 1.1 at the maximum output power.     

Efficient, resonantly pumped, room-temperature Er3+:GdVO4 laser

We report an efficient room-temperature operation of a resonantly pumped Er3+:GdVO4 laser at 1598.5 nm. The maximum continuous wave (CW) output power of 3.5 W with slope efficiency of 56% was achieved with resonant pumping by an Er-fiber laser at 1538.6 nm. With pumping by a commercial laser diode bar stack, a quasi-CW (QCW) output of 7.7 W and maximum slope efficiency of ~53% versus absorbed pump power were obtained. This is believed to be the first resonantly (in-band) pumped, room-temperature Er3+:GdVO4 laser.     

5-W repetitively Q-switched Er:LuAG laser resonantly pumped by an erbium fiber laser

We report a high-average-power, near-diffraction-limited Er:LuAG laser generating 5 W of power at 1.648 microm in either cw or repetitively Q-switched operation. When the laser is Q switched at 9 kHz, we measure 0.52 mJ/pulse. The laser is end pumped by a 20-W erbium fiber laser and achieves >30% optical conversion efficiency and >40% incident slope efficiency. This is, to our knowledge, the highest performance (average power and conversion efficiency) obtained from a bulk solid-state erbium laser.     

Resonantly pumped,high peak power Er:YAG laser

The high peak power hybrid Er:YAG laser, resonantly pumped at the wavelength of 1532 nm was developed. The fused silica acousto-optic modulator driven by 10 W of RF power was deployed as the Q-switch for such a laser. For the best case of Q-switching regime the pulses of 110 kW peak power (4 mJ, 37 ns) were reached at the pump power of 7.8 W and the repetition rate of 500 Hz.     

High-power polycrystalline Er:YAG ceramic laser at 1617 nm

We report on the efficient operation of a high-power erbium-doped polycrystalline Er:YAG ceramic laser at 1617 nm resonantly pumped by a high-power 1532 nm Er,Yb fiber laser. Lasing characteristics of Er:YAG ceramics with different Er3+ concentrations are evaluated and compared. With an output coupler of 15% transmission and 0.5 at. % Er3+-doped YAG ceramic as the gain media, the laser generates 14 W of output power at 1617 nm for 28.8 W of incident pump power at 1532 nm, corresponding to a slope efficiency with respect to incident pump power of 51.7%.     

885 nm pumped,high efficiency single-frequency Nd:YAG ring laser

We report an efficient single-frequency ring laser pumped directly into emitting level by a fiber-coupled laser diode (FCLD) at 885 nm for the first time. 4.8 W laser at 1064 nm was obtained in a 0.7 at % Nd:YAG with 63% slope efficiency and 51.7% light-light efficiency in absorbed pump power. At the same time, the line width of the longitudinal mode was about 50 MHz, and the beam was nearly diffraction-limited with M2 ≈ 1.07.     

High energy flash-lamp pumped Nd:YAG laser emitting at 1073.8 nm

A flash-lamp pumped Nd:YAG laser emitting 1073.8 nm is demonstrated. A thin film polarizer is inserted into the cavity for generating linearly polarized lasers. With incident pump energy of 69.6 J and pulse repetition rate of 1 Hz, output pulse energy of up to 487 mJ is obtained from a 1.0 at % Nd-doped Nd:YAG rod with a size of Ø6 mm × 110 mm. And the polarization ratio is more than 1000:1 at the output pulse energy of 487 mJ. The beam quality factors in the two orthogonal directions are 24.4 ± 0.2 and 24.6 ± 0.2, respectively.     

83 W yellow-green laser at 556 nm from frequency-doubling of a Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser at 1112 nm in LBO

We demonstrate a high power 556 nm yellow-green laser by intracavity frequency doubled of the diode-pumped 1112 nm Nd:YAG laser in a symmetrical L-shaped flat-flat cavity. The coatings of the resonator mirrors were carefully designed to achieve efficient operation of fundamental wavelength of the laser at 1112 nm. By using a type-II phase matching LBO nonlinear crystal as the frequency-doubler, the maximum output power of the 556 nm laser was measured to be as high as 83 W with a pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 10 kHz under incident pump power of 1150 W, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of about 7.2%. The fluctuation of output power was less than 2% over 30 min.     

551 nm Generation by sum-frequency mixing of intracavity pumped Nd:YAG laser

We present for the first time a Nd:YAG laser emitting at 1319 nm intracavity pumped by a 946 nm diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser. A 809 nm laser diode is used to pump the first Nd:YAG crystal emitting at 946 nm, and the second Nd:YAG laser emitting at 1319 nm intracavity pumped at 946 nm. Intracavity sumfrequency mixing at 946 and 1319 nm was then realized in a LBO crystal to reach the yellow range. We obtained a continuous-wave output power of 158 mW at 551 nm with a pump laser diode emitting 18.7 W at 809 nm.     

Influence of doping the pump-chamber material in a flashlamp pumped Er:YAG laser

The influence of the conversion of pump light of wavelengths below 400 nm into pump light with a central wavelength of 500 nm in a Europium doped quartzglass pump chamber has been investigated. The results are compared to the ones from an undoped quartzglass. The measurements resulted in a reduction of the slope efficiency by a factor of two for the doped quartzglass compared to the undoped one. Furthermore, the pump-pulse lengths around 80 μs lead to a decrease in the slope efficiency compared to pump-pulse lengths above 100 μs.