Development of diode-pumped passively Q-switched Nd:YAG microchip lasers - improvement of the peak power and stability

摘要

Passively Q-switched solid-state lasers are compact and simple, so they are attractive for scientific and industrial applications. We have improved the peak power and the stability of the Cr:YAG passively Q-switched Nd:YAG microchip laser. In order to increase the peak power; we have measured the dependence of the initial transmission of saturable absorber, the pump area and the cavity length. In order to stabilize the repetition frequency, we have modulated the power supply of the diode laser. As a result, its maximum output pulse energy exceeded half-mJ with the pulse width of 2.2-ns and the peak power was 230 kW with 100Hz repetition frequency and a beam quality of M{sup}2=1.27.