High peak power 4.7 ns electro-optic cavity dumped TEM00 1342-nm Nd: YVO4 laser

We presented the first demonstration of a high-peak power few-nanosecond pulse 1342-nm Nd:YVO4 laser by the combination of cavity dumping and in-band pumping. The maximum average output power of 3.2Wwith Gaussian TEM00 mode was obtained at the pulse repetition rate (PRR) of 10 kHz. The pulse width remained to be 4.7 +/- 0.1 ns for the PRR from 2 to 10 kHz. The maximum pulse energy of 0.55 mJ was obtained at 2 kHz and the corresponding peak power was up to 117 kW. This is, to our knowledge, the shortest ns pulse width and the highest peak power for LD-pumped 1.3 mu m TEM00 lasers with an active Q-switch device. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America