LD-pumped erbium and neodymium lasers with high energy and output beam quality

Abstract

Physical and fabrication peculiarities which provide the high output energy and beam quality for the diode pumped erbium glass and Nd:YAG lasers are considered. Developed design approach allow to make passively Q-switched erbium glass eye-safe portable laser sources with output energy 8 − 12 mJ (output pulse duration is less than 25 ns, pulse repetition rate up to 5 Hz) and beam quality M 2 less than 1.3. To reach these values the erbium laser pump unit parameters were optimized also. Namely, for the powerful laser diode arrays the optimal near-field fill-factor, output mirror reflectivity and heterostructure properties were determined. Construction of advanced diode and solid–state lasers as well as the optical properties of the active element and the pump unit make possible the lasing within a rather wide temperature interval (e.g. from minus forty till plus sixty Celsius degree) without application of water–based chillers. The transversally pumped Nd:YAG laser output beam uniformity was investigated depending on the active element (AE) pump conditions. In particular, to enhance the pump uniformity within AE volume, a special layer which practically doesn’t absorb the pump radiation but effectively scatters the pump and lasing beams, was used. Application of such layer results in amplified spontaneous emission suppression and improvement of the laser output beam uniformity. The carried out investigations allow us to fabricate the solid-state Nd:YAG lasers (1064 nm) with the output energy up to 420 mJ at the pulse repetition rate up to 30 Hz and the output energy up to 100 mJ at the pulse repetition rate of of 100 Hz. Also the laser sources with following characteristics: 35 mJ, 30 Hz (266 nm); 60 mJ, 30 Hz (355 nm); 100 mJ, 30 Hz (532 nm) were manufactured on the base of the developed Nd:YAG quantrons.