Side-pumped, high beam-quality Nd:YLF amplifier for LIDAR applications

Author

Wetter, Niklaus U. ; Ranieri, I.M. ; Baldochi, S.L.

Author_Institution

Centra de Lasers e Aplicacoes, Cidade Univ., SaoPaulo, Brazil

fYear

2005

fDate

12-17 June 2005

Firstpage

53

Abstract

We are constructing a Q-switched, frequency doubled Nd:YLF laser for pollution measurements in the Amazon Basin using the LIDAR technique. The laser should be very compact, robust and must present a good beam quality for efficient second harmonic generation. Our approach is a Nd:YLF MOPA based on four diode side-pumped modules (see figure 1), one for the oscillator and three for the amplifier. For compactness we use a Cr⁴⁺ saturable absorber as q-switcher. We conclude that our compact cavity design permits efficiency equal to other related works and power scalability while maintaining good beam quality.

Keywords

Q-switching; chromium; lithium compounds; measurement by laser beam; optical harmonic generation; optical radar; optical saturable absorption; pollution measurement; solid lasers; Amazon Basin; Cr⁴⁺; Cr⁴⁺ saturable absorber; LIDAR technique; LiYF4:Nd; MOPA; Q-switch; YLF:Nd; four diode side-pumped module; frequency doubled Nd:YLF laser; pollution measurement; second harmonic generation; Diodes; Laser beams; Laser radar; Mirrors; Neodymium; Power generation; Power lasers; Pulse amplifiers; Surface emitting lasers; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe, 2005. CLEO/Europe. 2005 Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8974-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE.2005.1567842

Filename

1567842