February 2015
Spotlight Summary by Andrey N. Kuzmin
High peak power 4.7 ns electro-optic cavity dumped TEM00 1342-nm Nd:YVO4 laser
Continuously pumped four-level Q-switched Neodymium lasers operating at 1.3-μm exhibit high gain and are in highly demand for numerous applications. In particular, owing to moderate absorption by water and skin pigment melanin this source of emission is popular in cosmetics and dermatology. Highly-energetic pulsed near-infrared (NIR) emission, obtained by Q-switching in the nanosecond range, can be efficiently converted through the nonlinear interaction mechanisms into other wavelengths across visible and NIR spectrum for applications in photonics, biophotonics and environmental studies. Second and third harmonic generation and a combination of these techniques with Raman shifting can up-convert 1.3-μm to a range of wavelengths from the blue to the red spectral regions, while employing the commonly used Raman shifters with Raman shift ~900-1000 cm-1 efficiently down-converts this wavelength directly into the eye-safe ~1.5 μm for utilizations in LIDAR and free-space communication. All these and other potential applications would benefit from a compact low-cost high-power 1.3-μm Q-switched laser source operating in the pulsed regime with pulse duration of less than 10 ns.
The authors of this Applied Optics article have proposed a way to achieve a high power and short pulse laser operation with pulse width independent of gain and pulse repetition rate. They used a combination of cavity dumping and in-band pumping techniques to demonstrate 1.3-μm Nd:YVO4 laser operation with the shortest nanosecond pulse width and the highest peak power for LD-pumped 1.3-μm TEM00 lasers. In their design, a BBO Pockels cell, used as a Q-switch, supplied the laser operation at repetition rate from 2 kHz to 10 kHz and pulse width of 4.7 ± 0.1 ns. A maximum average output power of 3.2 W at a pulse repetition rate of 10 kHz was obtained.
This enhancement of important laser parameters will stimulate further development of applications of high-power lasers operating at 1.3-μm.
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The authors of this Applied Optics article have proposed a way to achieve a high power and short pulse laser operation with pulse width independent of gain and pulse repetition rate. They used a combination of cavity dumping and in-band pumping techniques to demonstrate 1.3-μm Nd:YVO4 laser operation with the shortest nanosecond pulse width and the highest peak power for LD-pumped 1.3-μm TEM00 lasers. In their design, a BBO Pockels cell, used as a Q-switch, supplied the laser operation at repetition rate from 2 kHz to 10 kHz and pulse width of 4.7 ± 0.1 ns. A maximum average output power of 3.2 W at a pulse repetition rate of 10 kHz was obtained.
This enhancement of important laser parameters will stimulate further development of applications of high-power lasers operating at 1.3-μm.
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Article Information
High peak power 4.7 ns electro-optic cavity dumped TEM00 1342-nm Nd:YVO4 laser
Ke Liu, Ying Chen, Fangqin Li, Hongyan Xu, Nan Zong, Hongtao Yuan, Lei Yuan, Yong Bo, Qinjun Peng, Dafu Cui, and Zuyan Xu
Appl. Opt. 54(4) 717-720 (2015) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF