Abstract
In certain crystal growing conditions for Cr3+- and Nd3+-doped garnets a portion of the trivalent chromium ions can be transferred into a tetravalent state. In the active medium they form phototropic centers with saturable absorption at the Nd laser wavelength. By doping with such phototropic centers, the active medium provides a Q-switched regime where each pump pulse has a fine structure containing a regular sequence of pulses, each with a duration of a few hundred nanoseconds. The peak repetition rate inside the pulses varies from tens to hundreds of kilohertz depending on the initial phototropic absorption. Peak generation power can reach 5 X 10s Ш. It is possible to obtain both high average and high peak power simultaneously in the same laser. This regime allows one to construct a small sized solid state laser capable of treating materials which cannot be cut in other pump regimes, i.e., In a cw mode.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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