Diode-pumped doubly Q-switched c-cut Nd:GdVO₄ laser with AO modulator and GaAs saturable absorber

School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, P.R. China

Corresponding author: anjing@mail.sdu.edu.cn

Received: 5 April 2007
Accepted: 12 June 2007
Published online: 12 July 2007

Abstract

Using both acoustic-optic (AO) modulator and GaAs saturable absorber in the same cavity, a diode-pumped doubly Q-switched c-cut Nd:GdVO₄ laser has been realized. This laser can generate the more symmetric pulse with shorter pulse width in comparison with singly AO or GaAs Q-switched laser. We also made a comparison between c-cut and a-cut Nd:GdVO₄ crystals and the experimental results shows that the doubly Q-switched c-cut Nd:GdVO₄ laser can generate narrower pulse with higher peak power when the incident pump power higher than 3.4 W. The coupled rate equations, in which the spatial distributions of the intracavity photon density and the population-inversion density are taken into account, are introduced to theoretically analyze the experimental results, and the experimental results are in fair agreement with the numerical solutions.