Characterization and fabrication of Nd:YVO4 disc laser system

Abstract

A compact disk laser system was designed. A design consists of 808nm diode laser used as a pumping source, power supply to produce a different voltage, focusing lens to focus the pumping laser beam, a beam splitter with anti-reflecting face to the pumping beam 808nm and a totally reflecting face to 1064nm. The thin disc crystal was made from Nd: YVO4. The host material YVO4 is doped with 3% at Nd. The crystal dimensions are 4x5 mm with 1 mm thickness placed on Indium material of thickness 0.1 mm. In pulsed mode, output energy linearly increased with the input current, while it was decreased with the pulse frequency. Threshold current was enhanced, with increasing the pulse frequency. Maximum energy output from a thin disc laser was (0.98)μJ with current (0.49) A at a frequency(1.3kHz). In CW mode the threshold current to get output power from thin disc laser was 1A and maximum output power was 22 mW with a conversion efficiency of 2.5% power. In pulsed mode, a threshold current decreased with decreasing a pulse frequency and increasing energy output. Also at pulse frequency higher than 1.9 kHz, there was not output energy from the thin disc laser. Best pulse frequency is 1.3 kHz.