Abstract

Pulsed diode pumped solid state lasers are versatile and powerful sources for an increasing number of applications. Yet, the energy that is available from a single oscillator is often too low and the laser pulses need amplification in order to reach the needed level of energy. Regenerative amplification is a good way to achieve that and regenerative amplifiers are widely used for amplifying laser pulses from the femtosecond to the nanosecond regimes. In a regenerative cavity, the amplification medium is either end pumped or side pumped. In the first case, there is a good overlap between the pumping and the laser beams but this method requires high brightness laser diodes which are not available for high energies. In the second case, one can use low brightness diodes and achieve a reasonable gain per pass with a medium that is long enough and with a large number of diodes. However the overlap is poor and the optical to optical conversion ratio is generally low.

© 2000 IEEE