Abstract
Passive mode locking of solid-state lasers using saturable absorbers has been receiving considerable attention in recent years.1–5 Saturable absorber mode locking has the advantage of easy to operate and cost effective, however, it usually also introduces the Q-switching instabilities. For many applications where a constant pulse energy and high repetition rate are needed, this is very undesirable. In this report, we demonstrate the CW mode locking in a Nd:YVO4 laser by using a single crystal GaAs wafer as the saturable absorber as well as the output coupler. We show that by simply changing the laser power density in the GaAs wafer either a pure CW mode locking or a Q-switched mode locking can be achieved.
© 2002 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
A. Agnesi, A. Guancialini, G. Reali, J. Jabczyński, K. Kopczyński, and Z. Mierczyk
PS73 The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO/Europe) 2001
L. Krainer, P.M. Maletinsky, M. Moser, R. Paschotta, and U. Keller
CWA41 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 2002
C. Scurtescu, Z. Y. Zhang, A. J. Alcock, R. Fedosejevs, M. Blumin, I. Saveliev, S. Yang, H. E. Ruda, and Y.Y. Tsui
CMN7 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 2007