Continuous wave and passively Q-switched laser performance of a Nd-doped mixed crystal Nd:Lu0.5Gd0.5VO4

The authors reported continuous wave (cw) and passively Q-switched laser performances of Nd:Lu0.5Gd0.5VO4 crystal at 1.06 mu m. cw output power of 6.65 W was obtained under the incident pump power of 13.75 W with slop efficiency of 51%. In the passively Q-switched operation, the shortest pulse width, largest pulse energy, and highest peak power were achieved to be 6.2 ns, 192.5 mu J, and 31.06 kW, respectively, with Cr4+ doped yttrium aluminum garnet crystals as the saturable absorbers. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.