Abstract
Many industrial and scientific applications require extremely short (< 1 ns) high peak power (> 100 kW) laser pulses. A sub-ns passively Q-switched composite Yb:YAG/Cr4+:YAG microchip laser was reported recently, operating at up to 3.5 kHz with 175 μJ pulse energy [1]. Owing to extremely high intracavity power density and reliability issues, a different approach relying on a moderate-energy high-frequency oscillator and a single amplifier stage looks more flexible and power-scalable.
© 2009 IEEE
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