A continuous-wave Fe:ZnSe laser pumped by an efficient Er:Y_2O_3 laser

摘要

Fe:ZnSe lasers have been pumped by several types of diode-pumped solid state laser, including Cr:Er:YSGG (2800 nm), Cr:CdSe (2970 nm), and Er:YAG (2698 nm, 2937 nm). None of these sources has exceeded 1.5 W of true continuous-wave (CW) output power. In this work, we report demonstration of a CW Fe:ZnSe laser pumped by a 10 W Er:Y_2O_3 laser emitting at 2740 nm, which had not been previously attempted. The Er:Y_2O_3 pump laser was characterized with respect to propagation losses, beam quality, mode size, and pointing stability. It was determined that the limit of output power from the Fe:ZnSe laser was limited by the output stability of the pump laser. The Fe:ZnSe laser operated with ＞ 22% slope efficiency and 800 mW output power was achieved at approximately 4050 nm.