Proceedings Article | 18 December 2014
KEYWORDS: Crystals, Laser crystals, Composites, Laser countermeasures, Q switched lasers, Mirrors, Pulsed laser operation, Q switching, Neodymium lasers, Absorption
Compared with lamp pumped solid state laser, laser-diode pumped all-solid-state laser (DPSL) has the characteristic of high efficiency, long life and reliable under the condition of high repetition rate. Therefore, A high repetition rate DPSL has a broad application prospect in the laser detection, laser communication and optoelectronic countermeasure and other fields. Laser-diode (LD) pumped acousto-optic(AO) Q-switch all-solid-state has attractive features, such as compact structure, reliable operation, high repetition rate and short pulse width. Laser crystal is the core component of the laser. Usually composite crystal thermal lens focal length is three times more than traditional crystal, so it can avoid the serious heating effect of the operation material bumping by the traditional method. In this paper, we present a high repetition rate acousto-optic Q-switched Nd:YVO4 laser pumped by 880nm laser diode. By using the 0.25% doping concentration Nd:YVO4 single end composite crystal size of 3*3*(4+16) mm3 , with the 50 W LD pumped power, in order to calculate the laser crystal absorption efficiency of pump light, so that more accurate calculation of light conversion efficiency, first we measured 880 nm pump light absorption, crystal is calculated on the pump light absorption efficiency of 75%; When we put in the cavity mirror to form a flat resonant cavity, we obtained the 1064 nm continuous laser output power of 26 W and 27.1 W, with the output mirror transmittance of 20% and 48%, respectively. 50.7% and 48.7% optical to optical conversion efficiency has been achieved experimentally. When we put in AO Q-switch, with the repetition rate of 50 kHz, 100 kHz and 200 kHz, the 1064 nm laser output power is 21 W, 21.28 W and 20.58 W, and the peak power is 32.9 kW, 17.3 kW, 8.5 kW, respectively. Under the high repetition rate circumstance, the pulse width is limited to 12 ns.
