Abstract
Compact, stable, high-power and high repetition rate picosecond laser systems are excellent sources for optical parametric chirped pulse amplification systems and laser satellite ranging systems. Compared with the traditional complex high-power amplifier, this article reports a compact high-power picosecond laser system at a repetition rate of 1 kHz based on Nd:YAG bulk crystal. The thermal lens effect limits the regenerative amplifier to directly output higher energy. For this reason, multi-stage traveling-wave amplifiers are usually used to gradually increase the laser pulse energy. So as to achieve a compact structure, a regenerative amplifier that can output higher power at 1 kHz is designed in the laser system. The regenerative amplifier can output the power of 6.5 W at the pump power of 41.5 W; the beam quality of M2 factor was about 1.3. A more flexible thermal depolarization compensation structure is applied in the side-pumped amplifier, which can effectively compensate for thermal lens effect and thermal depolarization at different pump powers. Finally, the laser pulse can achieve an output power higher than 50 W at 1 kHz after passing through an end-pumped traveling-wave amplifier and a side-pumped traveling wave amplifier.
Highlights
The development of short-pulse laser technology in recent years has tremendous impetus in the developing of industrial micro-machining, scientific research and medical equipment [1].High repetition rate and high-power picosecond laser is an excellent light source for material cold working, pumping high repetition rate optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA)system, laser satellite ranging, UV light generation, terahertz generation, and imaging [2,3,4].Passive Q-switching technology can be used to directly output picosecond pulses, the pulse duration is usually more than 500 ps
Due to the large gain factor of the regenerative amplifier, it is very suitable for amplifying low-energy seed pulses
Seed pulses can be amplified to several millijoules by regenerative amplifier
Summary
The development of short-pulse laser technology in recent years has tremendous impetus in the developing of industrial micro-machining, scientific research and medical equipment [1]. End-pumped and side-pumped hybrid amplifiers are used to obtain laser pulses with high power and high beam quality. In the above-mentioned systems, the output power of the regenerative amplifier stage is usually about 2 W at 1 kHz. In order to achieve higher output power, three or more traveling-wave amplifiers are usually required. The Yb-doped crystal usually has a wider gain bandwidth, so it can be used in chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system to output high-energy and ultra-short laser pulses. Compared with the amplification systems of the above-mentioned literature, this regenerative amplifier can achieve higher output power, thereby reducing the number of subsequent traveling-wave amplifications. Compared with the above-mentioned high-power laser systems, this laser system has a more compact structure
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