Efficient room temperature cw Yb:glass laser pumped by a 946nm Nd:YAG laser

By pumping with a cw diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating at 946nm laser operation of a new Yb-doped phosphate glass with 440mW cw output power and a slope efficiency of 48% with respect to the absorbed pump power was achieved at room temperature

Surface and buried planar waveguide lasers based on KY(WO₄)₂:Yb³⁺

Highly efficient CW laser emission based on thin layers of KY(WO4)2:Yb3+ grown by liquid-phase epitaxy was demonstrated at room temperature

Tm:KLu(WO4)2 microchip laser Q-switched by a graphene-based saturable absorber

We report on the first Tm-doped double tungstate microchip laser Q-switched with graphene using a Tm:KLu(WO4)2 crystal cut along the Ng dielectric axis. This laser generates a maximum average output power of 310 mW with a slope efficiency of 13%. At a repetition rate of 190 kHz the shortest pulses with 285 ns duration and 1.6 μJ energy are achieved

Comparative study of Yb:Lu3Al5O12 and Yb:Lu2O3 laser Ceramics Produced from Laser-Ablated Nanopowders

We present a comparative study of two Lu-based oxide ceramics doped with Yb3+ ions, namely Yb:Lu3Al5O12 (garnet) and Yb:Lu2O3 (sesquioxide), promising for thin-disk lasers. The ceramics are fabricated using nanopowders of 3.6 at.% Yb:Lu2O3 and Al2O3 produced by laser ablation: Yb:Lu3Al5O12 – by vacuum sintering at 1800 °C for 5 h with the addition of 1 wt% TEOS as a sintering aid, and Yb:Lu2O3 – by vacuum pre-sintering at 1250 °C for 2 h followed by Hot Isostatic Pressing at 1400 °C for 2 h under Ar gas pressure of 207 MPa. The comparison includes the structure, Raman spectra, transmission, optical spectroscopy and laser operation. The crystal-field splitting of Yb3+ multiplets is revealed for Lu3Al5O12. A continuous-wave (CW) Yb:Lu3Al5O12 ceramic microchip laser generates 5.65 W at 1031.1 nm with a slope efficiency of 67.2%. In the quasi-CW regime, the peak power is scaled up to 8.83 W. The power scaling for the Yb:Lu2O3 ceramic laser is limited by losses originating from residual coloration and inferior thermal behavior. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l.This work was supported by the Spanish Government (project No. MAT2016-75716-C2-1-R ( AEI / FEDER, UE)); Generalitat de Catalunya (project No. 2017SGR755 ); Government of the Russian Federation (state task project No. 0389-2016-0002 (2018–2020)); RFBR (Grant No. 19-03-00855). The authors gratefully acknowledge Vyacheslav V. Platonov and Egor V. Tikhonov from IEP UrB RAS for providing Yb:Lu 2 O 3 and Al 2 O 3 nanopowders. L. B. thanks Mikhail Baranov from ITMO University for the help with the SEM studies

Passive Q-switching of a Tm,Ho:KLu(WO4)2 microchip laser by a Cr:ZnS saturable absorber

A diode-pumped Tm;Ho:KLu WO42 microchip laser passively Q-switched with a Cr:ZnS saturable absorber generated an average output power of 131 mW at 2063.6 nm with a slope efficiency of 11% and a Q-switching conversion efficiency of 58%. The pulse characteristics were 14 ns∕9 μJ at a pulse repetition frequency of 14.5 kHz. With higher modulation depth of the saturable absorber, 9 ns∕10.4 μJ∕8.2 kHz pulses were generated at 2061.1 nm, corresponding to a record peak power extracted from a passively Q-switched Tm,Ho laser of 1.15 kW. A theoretical model is presented, predicting the pulse energy and duration. The simulations are in good agreement with the experimental results