Abstract

Results on the pumping of several tunable, Cr-doped solid-state lasers at 670 nm are presented in detail. An alexandrite laser was diode pumped in a low-threshold resonator, providing a slope efficiency of 25% and requiring only 12 mW to exceed threshold. The spectral bandwidth was 2.1 nm, and temporal output spiking diminished as the pump power increased. Cr:LICAF was pumped at 670 nm with a dye laser. A threshold power of 56 mW and a slope efficiency of 37% were obtained. Both cw and repetitive Q-switched operation of this laser were demonstrated for the first time. The LICAF laser produced over 170 mW cw and 26 µJ at 3 kHz. The temporal output of the LICAF laser showed large amplitude fluctuations, even for high pump power. A Findlay–Clay analysis was performed for both lasers to obtain the singlepass loss and small-signal gain.

© 1990 Optical Society of America