LD Pumped Nd: GdVO4 Laser Operating At 1.34um

Scientists and researchers have been looking for new laser source since the discovery of the laser in 1960's. Nowadays, lasers play a more and more important role in various fields of modern society. The red-green-blue(RGB) lasers have important application in data storage and data transfer,laser disk technique,laser printing and color reprography. Pulse lasers with large power can be used as weapon in war. In medical field, some lasers at IR band are safe for the people naked eyes, so which can be used as scalpel in operations. Nd doped solid-state laser still are the most important laser source, which also are the foundation to obtain other lasers through frequency-conversion technique.The laser of nearby 1.34μm wavelength is identical with the low dispersive and low loss wavelength of silicon optical fibers. Therefore, it coincides with the transmission window of silicon optical fibers and the frequency-doubling of these lasers supplies an effective way to generate red lasers, so there are widespread application fields for the lasers operating nearby 1.34μm in laser medicine, optical fiber communication, optical sensing locating and the pump source of medial infrared optical parametric oscillation. Now Nd:YAG and Nd:YVO₄ lasers are the most widely used laser source.Nd:GdVO₄ crystal is a new type laser material firstly reported by Russian and German scientists . Nd:GdVO₄ crystal, with high thermal conductivity, is a promising material in medium and high power lasers. This dissertation presents the laser performance of Nd:GdVO₄. The contents can be outlined as follows:1,The development of all-solid-state laser and the passive Q-switching technology, the comparison of several kinds of laser crystal properties and the properties of the Nd:GdVO₄ crystal are introduced.2,AO Q-switching is an important way to obtain the quasi-continuous laser. Basing on static output of a diode pumped 1.34μm a-cut Nd:GdVO₄ laser, the dynamic output properties of the laser Q-switched by a AO Q-switch are experimental researched. When the repetition rate of the AO Q-switch is 5kHz, the output pulse with the pulse width of 170ns, the pulse energy of 44.8μJ and the peak power of 256W is obtained. The experimental results are consistent with the theoretical analysis.3,We investigated a high power diode-laser pumped passively Q-switched c-cut Nd:GdVO₄ solid-state laser, lasing at 1.34μm, with a Co²⁺:LaMgAl₁₁O₁₉ saturable absorber. With the optimum output coupler transmission T=5.5 % and pump power of 11.5 w, the static output power of 3.01 w was obtained. The passively Q-switching operation with Co:LMA (initial transmission T₀=90 %) as saturable absorber, shows that the shortest output pulse width, the highest output power, the highest pulse repetition and the highest pulse peak power were 32ns, 266mW , 277kHz and 187W , respectively.By the theoretical and experimental research, we have a better understanding for the Q-switched material: Nd:GdVO₄ crystal. There are some instructional significance and application values for medial and high power 1.34μm passively Q-switched all-solid-state laser.