York E. Young

Resonantly pumped eyesafe erbium lasers

The viability of high-power and high-energy, direct eyesafe emission from bulk erbium lasers has recently been demonstrated. In this paper, we present a review of eyesafe erbium lasers that are resonantly pumped by both fiber and diode lasers. High brightness pumping with a 1.53-/spl mu/m erbium fiber laser has yielded 60 W of continuous wave (CW) output, 10 W of repetitively Q-switched output, and as much as 16 mJ of pulse energy. Diode laser pumping has yielded 38 W of quasi-CW output and >40 mJ of Q-switched output.

Mid-infrared ZnGeP 2 parametric oscillator directly pumped by a pulsed 2 μm Tm-doped fiber laser

We have demonstrated what we believe to be the first mid-infrared optical parametric oscillator (OPO) pumped directly by a pulsed Tm-doped fiber laser. The Tm-fiber pump laser produces 30 ns pulses with a repetition rate of 30 kHz at a wavelength of 2 μm. The ZnGeP2 (ZGP) OPO produces 20 ns mid-IR pulses in the 3.4-3.9 μm and 4.1-4.7 μm spectral regions simultaneously. More than 658 mW of mid-IR output power has been generated with a total OPO slope efficiency greater than 35%.

Efficient 1645-nm Er:YAG laser

We report a resonantly fiber-laser-pumped Er:YAG laser operating at the eye-safe wavelength of 1645 nm, exhibiting 43% optical efficiency and 54% incident slope efficiency and emitting 7-W average power when repetitively Q switched at 10 kHz. To our knowledge, this is the best performance (conversion efficiency and average power) obtained from a bulk solid-state Q-switched erbium laser. At a 1.1-kHz pulse repetition frequency the laser produces 3.4-mJ pulses with a corresponding peak power of 162 kW. Frequency doubling to produce 822.5-nm, 4.7-kW pulses at 10 kHz was performed to demonstrate the lasers utility.

5-W repetitively Q-switched Er:LuAG laser resonantly pumped by an erbium fiber laser

We report a high-average-power, near-diffraction-limited Er:LuAG laser generating 5 W of power at 1.648 microm in either cw or repetitively Q-switched operation. When the laser is Q switched at 9 kHz, we measure 0.52 mJ/pulse. The laser is end pumped by a 20-W erbium fiber laser and achieves >30% optical conversion efficiency and >40% incident slope efficiency. This is, to our knowledge, the highest performance (average power and conversion efficiency) obtained from a bulk solid-state erbium laser.

Thulium fiber laser-pumped mid-IR OPO

Fiber lasers are advancing rapidly due to their ability to generate stable, efficient, and diffraction-limited beams with significant peak and average powers. This is of particular interest as fibers provide an ideal pump source for driving parametric processes. Most nonlinear optical crystals which provide phase-matching to the mid-IR at commercially available fiber pump wavelengths suffer from high absorption above 4μm, resulting in low conversion efficiencies in the 4-5μm spectral region. The nonlinear optical crystals which combine low absorption in this same spectral region with high nonlinear gain require pumping at longer wavelengths (typically >1.9μm). In this paper, we report a novel mid-IR OPO pumped by a pulsed thulium-doped fiber laser operating at 2-microns. The eyesafe thulium-fiber pump laser generates >3W of average power at >30kHz repetition rate with 15-30ns pulses in a near diffraction-limited beam. The ZnGeP2 (ZGP) OPO produces tunable mid-IR output power in the 3.4-3.99μm (signal) and the 4.0-4.7μm (idler) spectral regions in both singly resonant (SRO) and doubly resonant (DRO) formats. The highest mid-IR output power achieved from this system was 800mW with 20% conversion efficiency at 40kHz. In a separate experiment, the 3W of 2-micron light was further amplified to the 20W level. This amplified output was also used to pump a ZGP OPO, resulting in 2W of output power in the mid-IR. To our knowledge, these are the first demonstrations of a fiber-pumped ZGP OPO.

Recent advances in all-epitaxial growth and properties of orientation-patterned gallium arsenide (OP-GaAs)

We report on all-epitaxial growth of large diameter (3-inch), large aperture (≫1.5mm thick), low-loss (≪0.005cm⁻¹) QPM GaAs. 2-µm-laser-pumped OPO performance was comparable to that of ZnGeP<inf>2</inf>.

High-peak-power erbium lasers resonantly pumped by fiber lasers

Challenges typically associated with efficient operation of bulk solid-state erbium lasers operating on the eyesafe (4I13/2 → 4I15/2) transition have been effectively overcome using a high-brightness fiber laser as a pump source. We report exceptional performance in a variety of laser hosts resonantly pumped by a cw, high-average-power erbium fiber laser. Herein we present results from resonantly pumped erbium-doped YAG, LuAG, YLF, YAlO3, and YVO4, in cw and repetitively Q-switched operation. Most notable results include 9.5 W of near-diffraction-limited output from an Er:YAG laser at 1.645 μm, Q-switched at 10 kHz with 40 ns pulsewidth (25 kW peak power) as well as 3.4 μJ/pulse with 21 ns pulses at 1.1 kHz (160 kW peak). We have achieved overall optical conversion efficiency greater than 50% with incident slope efficiency >60%. This is, to our knowledge, the highest performance (average power and conversion efficiency) obtained from a bulk solid-state Q-switched erbium laser. To demonstrate the utility of such sources, we also present results from second harmonic generation to 822nm, as well as a periodically poled lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator generating tunable 2.5 - 3.8 micron output.

Athermal, lightweight, diode-pumped, 1-micron transmitter

Design and projected performance of a lightweight, 1064 nm, laser transmitter is described. A 40 mJ, diode side-pumped Nd:YAG zig-zag slab oscillator is configured to operate on either of two Nd:YAG absorption bands (795 nm or 807 nm) to provide stable operation over a 100°C temperature range, using minimal power for diode wavelength stabilization.