High-Power Dual-End-Pumped Actively Q-Switched Ho:YAG Ceramic Laser**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 61308009, 61405047 and 50990301, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project under Grant No 2015T80339, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant No HIT.NSRIF.2015042, and the Science Fund for Outstanding Youths of Heilongjiang Province under Grant No JQ201310.

Abstract

We present a high-power Ho:YAG ceramic laser pumped at 1908 nm. Using a dual-end-pumped structure, the maximum continuous-wave output power of 48 W is obtained, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 70.4% with respect to the absorbed pump power. At actively Q-switched mode, the maximum average output power of 46 W and the minimum pulse width of 21 ns are achieved at a pulse repetition frequency of 20 kHz, corresponding to a peak power of approximately 109.5 kW. In addition, the beam-quality M2 factor is found to be 1.4 at the maximum output power.