Abstract

At CLEO ‘85 we reported an efficient flashlamp-pumped titanium-doped sapphire laser which is capable of output energies of several hundred millijoules. Despite advances in efficiency, however, high power operation of the laser was still limited in part by short flashlamp life (approximately 10 shots). We now report a system with greatly extended flashlamp life (10 10 shot) which for the first time makes possible a flashlamp-pumped system with multi-watt average power.

© 1986 Optical Society of America