Non-Pulse-Leakage 100-kHz Level, High Beam Quality Industrial Grade Nd:YVO4 Picosecond Amplifier

Abstract

A non-pulse-leakage optical fiber pumped 100-kHz level high beam quality Nd:YVO 4 picosecond amplifier has been developed. An 80 MHz, 11.5 ps mode-locked picosecond laser is used as the seed with single pulse energy of 1 nJ. By harnessing the double β-BaB 2 O 4 (BBO) crystal Pockels cells in both the pulse picker and regenerative amplifier, the seed pulse leakage of the output is suppressed effectively with an adjustable repetition rate from 200 to 500 kHz. Through one stage traveling-wave amplifier, a maximum output power of 24.5 W is generated corresponding to the injected regenerative amplified power of 9.73 W at 500 kHz. The output pulse duration is 16.9 ps, and the beam quality factor M 2 is measured to be 1.25 with near-field roundness higher than 99% at the full output power.

500-kHz Level High Energy Double-Pass Nd:YVO4 Picosecond Amplifier with Optic–Optic Efficiency of 51%

“…x = 1.28 along the x axis direction and M 2 y = 1.17 along the y axis direction, respectively. Compared with the results of existing amplifiers [11][12][13], the optic-optic efficiency of 51.07% is higher with good beam quality and high frequency. Our measurements show that this amplifier structure enables the laser to be fully amplified and operates stably.…”

“…x = 2.8 along the x-axis direction and M 2 y = 2.2. along the y-axis direction, respectively. In 2017, Zhenao Bai [13] reported a non-pulse-leakage optical fiber pumped 100 kHz level high beam quality Nd:YVO 4 picosecond amplifier. An 80 MHz, 11.5 ps mode-locked picosecond laser was used as the seed with single pulse energy of 1 nJ, a maximum output power of 24.5 W was generated corresponding to the injected regenerative amplified power of 9.73 W at 500 kHz.…”

Special Issue on Solid State Lasers Materials, Technologies and Applications

“…In particular, a very flexible, temporally programmable, arbitrary pulse shape hybrid MOPA laser was described by M. Nie, Q. Liu, X. Cao, and X. Fu in [4], whereas an industrial grade, picosecond regenerative amplifier based on Nd:YVO 4 is presented by Z. Bai, Z. Bai, Z. Kang, F. Lian, W. Lin, and Z. Fan in [5].…”

A High Peak Power and High Beam Quality Sub-Nanosecond Nd:YVO4 Laser System at 1 kHz Repetition Rate without SRS Process

“…As is already known, beam quality always gets worse due to thermally induced birefringence in Nd:YAG crystal [21,24]. Laser systems based on end-pumped bulk Nd:YVO 4 crystal have better beam quality because of natural birefringence architecture, which can alleviate thermally induced birefringence [25][26][27]. At the same time, Nd:YVO 4 is a self-excited Raman scattering crystal [28][29][30].…”