Diode-pumped passively Q-switched Yb3+:LuYLaVO4 laser with GaAs saturable absorber

A passively Q-switched (PQS) Yb3+:LuYLaVO4 laser based on a GaAs saturable absorber is reported. The nonlinear saturable absorption property of GaAs has been studied, the saturation fluence, modulation depth and non-saturation loss were characterized to be 3.3 MW/cm(2), 4.5% and 54.7%, respectively. In the PQS laser operation, the highest pulse repetition rate, shortest pulse width, largest single pulse energy and highest pulse peak power were measured to be 40 kHz, 4 ns, 16.7 mu J and 4.2 kW. The peak power achieved nearly three orders of magnitude improvement compared with the former Yb3+:LuYLaVO4 PQS lasers.

Automated summary

A passively Q-switched Yb3+:LuYLaVO4 laser based on a GaAs saturable absorber is reported in this paper. The saturable absorption property of GaAs was studied and the performance parameters of the laser were measured. The results showed significant improvements in pulse repetition rate, pulse width, single pulse energy, and pulse peak power compared with previous lasers.