Practical source of 50 ps pulses using a flashlamp pumped Nd:YAG laser and passive all-solid-state pulse control

摘要

We demonstrated that a simple flashlamp pumped Nd:YAG laser, with the insertion of solid state passive elements, can be made a source of trains (and single pulse) of high power picosecond pulses with accurate pulse to pulse reproducibility. The combination of passive negative feedback using GaAs together with Cr:YAG as saturable absorber in an actively mode-locked Nd:YAG laser led to stabilizing and stretching of the pulse train to 150 ns and compression of individual pulses from 83 ps to 48 ps. Cavity dumping resulted in single pulses at energies of 300 μJ with a nearly Gaussian spatial profile at a repetition rate of 5 Hz.