High Energy, High Peak Power 1342-nm Picosecond Nd:YVO₄Regenerative Amplifier

Abstract

We report on a high energy, high peak power 1342-nm Nd:YVO 4 picosecond (ps) regenerative amplifier under 880-nm laser-diode (LD) in-band pumping operating from 1 to 10 kHz. The maximum average output power of 1.62 W was obtained with the repetition rate of 10 kHz and the pulse width of 44.9 ps. The corresponding pulse energy and the peak power were up to 0.162 mJ and 3.61 MW with a total optical gain as high as 6.5 × 10 5 . The laser beam quality factor of M 2 was measured to be 1.75 at the full output power. The maximum pulse energy of 0.243 mJ and the maximum peak power of 5.55 MW were obtained at 1 kHz, resulting in its total optical gain of 9.7 × 10 5 . This is the highest pulse energy and the highest peak power for LD-pumped high-beam-quality 1342-nm ps lasers with kilohertz repetition rate reported to date.Index Terms-High energy, high peak power, picosecond, regenerative amplifier, 1342 nm.

20 W picosecond laser output at 1342 nm based on an in-band pumped Nd:YVO4 Innoslab amplifier

“…However, their inherent shortcomings of the conventional excimer lasers, such as comparatively large footprint, poor beam quality, and the limited pulse widths in nanosecond, limit their applications. Until now, numerous researches have been carried out in generating 1.3 µm lasers at continuous wave (CW) or pulsed operation [1,[11][12][13][14][15]. Among them, picosecond (ps) lasers are well adapted to various environments and have a flexible repetition rate and price.…”