Development of a lamp-pumped Cr:LiSAF laser operating at 20Hz for a terawatt CPA system

Ricardo E. Samad; Gesse E. C. Nogueira; Sonia L. Baldochi; Nilson D. Vieira Jr.

doi:10.1117/12.644145

23 February 2006 Development of a lamp-pumped Cr:LiSAF laser operating at 20Hz for a terawatt CPA system

Ricardo E. Samad, Gesse E. C. Nogueira, Sonia L. Baldochi, Nilson D. Vieira Jr.

Proceedings Volume 6101, Laser Beam Control and Applications; 610112 (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.644145
Event: Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering, 2006, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

We report here the development, construction and characterization of a flashlamp pumped Cr:LiSAF rod pumping cavity designed to minimize the thermal load on the crystal. The cavity is a close coupled one with 2 Xe lamps and absorptive filters between the lamps and the Cr:LiSAF rod, and is refrigerated with cooled water. A compact and stable (g₁×g₂=0.57) resonator was designed for lasers tests and gain medium characterization, and we expected to obtain operation at 20 Hz repetition rate. Nevertheless, the thermal load minimizing design was so successful that allowed laser operation up to 30 Hz with an average power of 20 W. When operating with a 10% transmission output coupler this laser exhibited an overall laser efficiency of 0.6% under 100 J electrical pumping, and a slope efficiency of 0.8%. Under these conditions, a maximum gain per pass of 1.5 was obtained, suitable for regenerative amplifiers. To increase the gain, the intracavity filters were substituted by glass plates, resulting in a gain per pass of 3.6, adequate for multipass amplifiers. In this configuration, and operating as a laser resonator, it showed a maximum overall efficiency of 2.81% under 88 J electrical pumping with a 25% transmission output coupler, and maximum output power of 18 W at 8 Hz. A study of the thermal load on the crystal was conducted by observation of the upper laser level lifetime, and we concluded that there are no noticeable accumulated thermal effects on the Cr:LiSAF emission.

Citation Download Citation

Ricardo E. Samad, Gesse E. C. Nogueira, Sonia L. Baldochi, and Nilson D. Vieira Jr. "Development of a lamp-pumped Cr:LiSAF laser operating at 20Hz for a terawatt CPA system", Proc. SPIE 6101, Laser Beam Control and Applications, 610112 (23 February 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.644145

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