Continuous wave Nd:YAG channel waveguide laser produced by focused proton beam writing

Abstract

We report on mirrorless continuous wave laser oscillation at 1064 nm from a 808 nm pumped Nd:YAG optical channel waveguide fabricated by 1 MeV focused proton beam writing. Pump power threshold has been found to be 94 mW with a laser slope efficiency of 40%. A maximum output power at 1064 nm for the waveguide laser is 63 mW at absorbed pump power of 247 mW.

Optical Waveguides Fabricated by Ion Implantation/Irradiation: A Review Optical Waveguides Fabricated by Ion Implantation/Irradiation: A Review

“…Moreover, swift-ion-irradiated Nd:YAG waveguide laser systems have similar performances (laser slope efficiencies of 16% and pump power thresholds of 38.3 mW) than the ion implanted samples (Ren et al, 2010a(Ren et al, , 2011a. (Yao et al, 2010).…”

“…For the first system, they found that the fluorescence properties of both Ce and Nd ions (including the energy transfer between them) were not significantly affected by the waveguide formation processing. Afterwards, Tan et al (Tan et al, 2010) showed generation of continuous wave lasers at a wavelength of ~1064 nm in Nd:YAG implanted with C 3+ at room temperature. Similar results were obtained for N 3+ -implanted Nd:YAG crystals by Ren et al (Ren et al, 2011a).…”

“…Yao et al (Yao et al, 2010) reported a waveguide laser in Nd:YAG crystals, produced by proton beam writing, with an output power of 60 mW at 1064 nm. This system exhibited the additional advantage of having highly symmetric guided modes (Figure 18), which would facilitate its connection with the optical fibers.…”

“…This system exhibited the additional advantage of having highly symmetric guided modes (Figure 18), which would facilitate its connection with the optical fibers. For the first ion implanted Nd:YAG ceramic planar waveguide, a 1064 nm laser was generated with a 19.5 mW threshold and 11% slope efficiency (Tan et al, 2010). Moreover, swift-ion-irradiated Nd:YAG waveguide laser systems have similar performances (laser slope efficiencies of 16% and pump power thresholds of 38.3 mW) than the ion implanted samples (Ren et al, 2010a(Ren et al, , 2011a.…”

Continuous wave ridge waveguide lasers in femtosecond laser micromachined ion irradiated Nd:YAG single crystals

“…Waveguide lasers have been realized in Nd:YAG crystals in the systems manufactured by ion beam implantation/irradiation [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] or femtosecond laser inscription [10][11][12][13]. Recently, the irradiation of swift heavy ions (i.e., with energy higher than 1 MeV/amu) has emerged to be a powerful and available technique to fabricate optical waveguide owing to the reduced irradiation fluences and larger refractive index changes for waveguide formation [4,14].…”