HiLASIANS Venkatesan Jambunathan, Martin Smrž, and Tomáš Mocek collaborated on a paper published in the Applied Physics B: Lasers and optics journal.
The study on the topic of Cryogenic laser operation of a “mixed” Yb:LuYAG garnet crystal was conducted in collaboration with researchers from several international institutions: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ruhr Universität Bochum, and Université de Caen Normandie. The other co-authors are Sami Slimi, Mingyan Pan, Yicheng Wang, Weidong Chen, Pavel Loiko, Rosa Maria Solé, Magdalena Aguiló, Francesc Díaz a Xavier Mateos.
We report on the continuous-wave and passively Q-switched operation of a compositionally “mixed” heavily doped 16.6 at.% Yb:(Y,Lu)3Al5O12 garnet crystal at cryogenic temperatures (100–200 K), pumped by a volume Bragg grating stabilized diode laser emitting at 969 nm. At 140 K, in the continuous-wave regime, a maximum output power of 10.65 W was achieved at ~ 1029 nm with a slope efficiency of 56% (versus the incident pump power), a laser threshold of 1.05 W and excellent beam quality. Using Cr4+:YAG as a saturable absorber, the passively Q-switched laser generated pulses with an energy/duration of 0.15 mJ/201 ns, respectively, at a repetition rate of 39.7 kHz, corresponding to a peak power of 0.39 kW.
