High-efficiency Nd:YVO₄ laser end-pumped
with a diode laser bar

Yihong Chen^a, Zhengjun Xiong^a, Gnian Cher Lim^a, Hong Yu Zheng^a, Xiaoyuan Peng^b

^a Gintic Institute of Manufacturing Technology, 71 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 638075

^b Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639815

ABSTRACT

Diode end-pumped solid-state lasers have the potential to yield high quality laser beams with high efficiency. However, its limited pump volume results in limited output power, usually under 1W. This paper presents a high-efficiency Nd:YVO₄ laser end-pumped by a 15W diode laser bar. An optical-optical efficiency as high as 42% and an output laser power of over 3W were obtained with a beam quality factor, M², of less than 1.2 and an output stability of ± 0.5%. Theoretical calculations and experimental data showed that the pumping laser beam was well- matched to the intracavity laser mode.

Keywords: end pumping, Nd:YVO₄ laser, diode laser, beam quality, conversion efficiency, Q-switch

Full paper in PDF 
Reprinted from SPIE Proc., Vol. 3898 (1999)

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