Abstract

This work deals with high energy eye-safe lasers for long-distance active imagery purpose. Direct resonant pumping of erbium appears as a very promising technique, either at 1530nm with fibre lasers or at 1470nm with laser-diodes [1-3]. Indeed, the long lifetime (5–10ms) of the upper laser level ensure a favourable energy storage capability and the resonant scheme leads to a reduced thermal loading if compared with usual pumping at 980nm in codoped Er-Yb materials. It is worth noting that only the summary is available for the ref [2] claiming the same energy than presented here.

© 2013 IEEE