Diode-pumped actively Q-switched Tm:YAG ring laser operation at room temperature

2-μm lasers with high pulse energy and long pulse width of hundreds of nanoseconds are needed urgently in the accurate wind velocity lidar systems. This paper presents the acoustic-optical Q-switched Tm:YAG laser performance in a pulsed-laser-diode end-pumping figure-eight ring resonator structure. Pulse energy and pulse width are investigated with the increasing of the incident pump energy at different repetition rate operation. Maximum energy of 4.6 mJ with the pulse width of 179.2 ns and 3.57 mJ with pulse width of 184.4 ns are obtained at the repetition rate of 20 and 100 Hz, respectively. Under free-running and Q-switched operation, the peak output wavelength is 2.014 μm at all time, and the beam quality factors are lower than 2 times diffraction-limited measured by a knife-edge traveling method.