Pulse train characteristics of a passively Q-switched microchip laser

During the past few years there has been an ever increasing interest in experimental studies of passively Q-switched (PQS) microchip lasers. However, the same trend is not evident, in theoretical modeling studies. Only recently has there been a comprehensive theoretical and numerical investigation of the pulse dynamics. This study included the limit-cycle analysis and presented a successful numerical analysis of the differential equations in the numerically challenging region where the pulse separation is six orders-of-magnitude larger than the pulse width. However, one area not thoroughly addressed was the pulse shape. In the following we derive simple design formulae for the peak power, pulse width, repetition rate, pulse energy and the pulse shape for Nd:YAG microchip lasers which are derived with the experimentalists in mind. These approximate solutions are anchored to our previous simulations which agree with experiment