Abstract
Beta barium borate (BBO) is a relatively new nonlinear material with many desirable physical properties,1,2 It has found many applications in harmonic generation primarily because of its high damage threshold, large range of transparency, and absence of photorefractive effects. Recent measurements of the electrooptic effect in BBO indicate that it also has a crystal orientation useful for electrooptic Q-switching or cavity dumping.3–6 We report the first demonstration of a Q-switched laser to use BBO as the electrooptic Q-switch modulator medium. A high gain fiashlamp pumped Nd:YAG laser and a small uncoated BBO sample were used for this experiment. Without optimizing cavity parameters, the laser produced 40-kW peak power pulses (125-ns FWHM) at a 10- Hz repetition rate with an average power of 50 mW.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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