Abstract
We present the investigation of diode-side-pumping of Alexandrite slab lasers in a range of designs using linear cavity and grazing-incidence bounce cavity configurations. An Alexandrite slab laser cavity with double-pass side pumping produces 23.4 mJ free-running energy at 100 Hz rate with slope efficiency ~40% with respect to absorbed pump energy. In a slab laser with single-bounce geometry output power of 12.2 W is produced, and in a double-bounce configuration 6.5 W multimode and 4.5 W output in TEM00 mode is produced. These first results of slab laser and amplifier designs in this paper highlight some of the potential strategies for power and energy scaling of Alexandrite using diode-side-pumped Alexandrite slab architectures with future availability of higher power red diode pumping.
Highlights
Alexandrite, the common name for the crystal chromium-doped chrysoberyl (Cr3+:BeAl2O4), has many excellent properties that make it extremely favourable as a solid-state laser material
Diode-side-pumped Alexandrite slab lasers in linear and bounce geometry laser designs have been demonstrated for the first time
In a compact CW diode pumped single bounce laser 12.2 W power was generated with a laser slope efficiency of 37%
Summary
Alexandrite, the common name for the crystal chromium-doped chrysoberyl (Cr3+:BeAl2O4), has many excellent properties that make it extremely favourable as a solid-state laser material. It has excellent thermal properties including a thermal conductivity (23 W/mK) almost twice as great as Nd:YAG [1] It is naturally birefringent giving highly polarised output parallel to the crystal b-axis and making it mostly immune to depolarisation by stress-induced birefringence. These combined properties together with a high optical damage threshold favours high average power operation with > 100W output demonstrated under lamp-pumping [3]. The results of slab laser and amplifier designs of this paper highlight some of the potential strategies for power and energy scaling of Alexandrite with future availability of higher power red diode pumping
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