Abstract

During the recent years, the solid state Q-switched microchip lasers with diode pumping have been widely investigated. Small size, simple construction and high pulse intensities enable wide applications of such microlasers. The passive Q-switching is achieved using crystalline saturable absorbers, e.g. Cr⁴⁺:YAG, Cr⁴⁺:GSGG etc. A lot of experimental results have been published recently, however, most of these publications lack a comparison with a comprehensive enough theoretical model that would enable a realistic description of generated pulse parameters of this kind of microlasers, i.e. pulse duration, intensity, repetition rate, jitter of pulses etc. Most of the currently used models apply mainly to bulk lasers and permit simulation of generation of a single giant pulse only. In order to optimize parameters of microlasers with continuous pumping, it is necessary to simulate the entire pulse buildup process from the level of quantum noise. The pulse buildup time is usually longer by several orders of magnitude than the duration of a single pulse. It is necessary to simulate pulse buildup process in order to investigate the dependency of pulse parameters on the instabilities of pumping rate and fluctuations of spontaneous emission leading to pulse parameters fluctuations and jitter of pulses in train.

© 2000 IEEE