Abstract

Copper vapour laser (CVL) pumped Ti:sapphire lasers have proved to be excellent sources of high repetition rate tunable near infrared radiation. The CVL wavelengths at 511 nm and 578 nm are well matched to the absorption band of Ti:sapphire and CVLs are unique as pump lasers in that they operate at high repetition rate (2-24 kHz) and high average power (up to 500 W in a single unit). With low and medium power CVLs (up to 18 W per crystal face) longitudinally pumped Ti:sapphire lasers have proved to be a robust and efficient, offering excellent beam quality, low threshold (<0.6 W), and slope efficiencies up to 30% giving the highest output power to date of 6.2 W at 6.2 kHz at 780 nm (1).

© 1998 IEEE