High-power Cr2+:ZnS saturable absorber passively Q-switched Ho:YAG ceramic laser and its application to pumping of a mid-IR OPO

摘要

We used the Cr2+:ZnS as a saturable absorber to obtain a passively Q-switched Ho:YAG ceramic laser operating near 2.1 mu m. The maximum average output power of 14.8Wand a shortest pulse width of 29 ns were obtained, and to our knowledge, this is the best report for the PQS Ho:YAG ceramic laser. A maximum energy per pulse of 0.6 mJ with a maximum pulse repetition frequency of 24.4 kHz was achieved, which corresponded to a peak power of 20 kW. We first used the PQS laser as the pump source of optical parametric oscillator to obtain the mid-infrared laser. A maximum average output power of 4.4 W was achieved from the ZnGeP2 parametric oscillator, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 49.5% with respect to the incident pump power. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America