LD-pumped actively Q-switched Tm,Ho:YLF laser at room temperature

We have investigated acoustic-optical Q-switched Tm,Ho:YLF laser end-pumped by a laser-diode. At room temperature, a 2.067 μm wavelength pulsed output is realized. Average output power, single pulse energy and pulse-width are measured at different incident pump powers and pulse repetition frequencies. When the incident pump power is 2.8 W, a maximum average output power of 189 mW is obtained at the repetition frequency of 9 kHz, and this corresponds to an optical conversion efficiency of 6.8%. The maximum single pulse energy of 65μJ, the shortest pulse-width with full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 138 ns and the maximum peak power of 470 W are obtained at the pulse repetition frequency of 1 kHz.