Er/Yb glass laser with compact mechanical Q-switch

We describe a compact, side-pumped, Er/Yb glass laser with a low cost mechanical Q-switch. The Q-switch uses a mirror or reflecting prism mounted on a cantilever resonant spring that is driven by a small electromagnetic coil. The demonstrated laser used a 5 mm long Er/Yb glass gain element, and was side-pumped by a 940 nm, 5 mm wide diode bar generating up to 100 W peak power. Target energies of 3mJ have been realized in a near-diffraction limited mode, with pulse widths of 15-25ns, and an optical-to-optical efficiency of greater than 2%. The mechanical Q-switch assembly was fully athermalized via mounting a displacing porro reflector to the cantilever spring, where a 2.5mJ laser was observed to operate with less than 5% variance over -35 degrees C to +60 degrees C.