Diode-pumped ring-cavity-dumped few-nanosecond single-longitudinal-mode Alexandrite laser

Abstract

A red laser diode (LD) pumped single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) short-pulsed Alexandrite laser with a pulse duration of a few nanoseconds is presented, in which the cavity-dumping technique is for the first time, to our knowledge, introduced into the unidirectional ring cavity. For continuous-wave (CW) operation, a SLM Alexandrite laser with wavelength tunability from 735 nm to 786 nm was realized, and the maximum output power was 1.03 W at 759 nm. In the ring-cavity-dumped configuration, a pulsed SLM 770.6-nm Alexandrite laser was demonstrated, with a pulse energy of 12.1 µJ, a pulse duration of 7.8 ns, and a linewidth of 727 MHz at 1-kHz repetition rate. The corresponding beam quality factors were measured to be Mx2 = 1.14 and My2 = 1.09. When the repetition rate was increased to 10 kHz, the output power went up to 89 mW.