Highly efficient diode-pumped lasers based on in-band pumping of Nd:YVO4 crystal
Date
2017
Authors
Waritanant, Tanant
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Abstract
This work proposed to study Neodymium-doped laser crystals as an alternative for ultrashort pulse generation with medium output power level and high efficiency. The first section of this thesis focused on the thermal effect which is the main limitation in power scaling. The results showed that the thermal lensing effect is significantly reduced with in-band pumping at 914 nm.
Aside from thermal lens effect investigation, discrete wavelength tuning and dual-wavelength operations were demonstrated with intracavity birefringent plates.
Mode locking operations with SESAM as saturable absorber was demonstrated under 914 nm pump wavelength for the first time with the highest efficiency to date. The output in mode-locked regime was stable and self-starting with 16 ps pulse duration which can be extended to adjacent emission lines at 1073 nm and 1085 nm.
Finally, two important candidates for low quantum defect pumping, Nd:CALYO and Nd:SYSO, were identified and tested for the first time.
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Keywords
Neodymium laser, Solid-state laser, Diode-pumped laser, Thermal lensing, Birefringence, Picosecond laser