[OPTICAL REVIEW Vol. 7, No. 1 (2000) 58-61]
Flash-Lamp-Pumped Acousto-Optic Q-switched Cr-Tm:YAG Laser
Cheng LI,1 Jie SONG,1 Deyuan SHEN,1 Yuhui CAO,2 Nam Seong KIM1 and Ken-ichi UEDA1
1Institute for Laser Science, University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1, Chofugaoka, Chofu, Tokyo, 182-8585 Japan, 2Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China
(Received September 18, 1999; Accepted November 10, 1999)
High-power Q-switched solid-state lasers operating at 2 μm wavelength are needed for many applications. Using flash-lamp pumping, we developed an acousto-optic Q-switched Cr-Tm:YAG laser and realized single transverse mode oscillation with a maximum pulse energy exceeding 0.8 J when the repetition frequency was 1 Hz. The pulse width and the corresponding peak power were 135 ns and 5.9 MW, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the highest output power of AO-Q-switched Cr-Tm:YAG lasers have ever reported.
Key words : Cr-Tm:YAG laser, Q-switched, solid-state laser, eye-safe laser