Investigations and Comparisons of Active Q-Switching Laser Performances of Composite and Conventional Nd:YVO4 Crystals with Electro-Optic Modulator |
| Shixia Li, Yufei Li, Shengzhi Zhao, Guiqiu Li, Xiaomei Wang, Kejian Yang, Tao Li and Dechun Li
School of Information Science and Engineering and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory, of Laser Technology and Application, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China |
| Received: May 17, 2014; In final form: January 16, 2015 |
| Full Text PDF |
| Actively Q-switched laser performances of composite and conventional Nd:YVO4 crystals were investigated and compared with different Nd-doped concentrations of laser media and different repetition rates of electro-optic modulator. Both continuous-wave and actively Q-switched operations were realized experimentally. At an incident pump power of 7.69 W, the shortest pulse duration of 6.5 ns was obtained by the composite Nd(0.1 at.%):YVO4/Nd(0.3 at.%):YVO4/Nd(0.8 at.%):YVO4 crystal at the repetition rate f=2 kHz. However, the composite Nd(0.1 at.%):YVO4/Nd(0.5 at.%):YVO4/Nd(1.0 at.%):YVO4 laser achieved the maximum average output power of 687 mW at f=10 kHz and the largest single pulse energy of 144 μ J at f=2 kHz. Power saturation of the conventional Nd:YVO4 crystal was shown during experiment, while no power saturation was observed on the composite Nd:YVO4crystals, showing good thermo-mechanical performances. |
DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.127.711 PACS numbers: 42.55.Xi, 42.60.Gd |