Room Temperature Erbium-Doped Yttrium Vanadate (Er:YVO4) Laser and Amplifier

Abstract

I report on the use of a 976-nm, diode-pumped, erbium-doped, yttrium vanadate (Er:YVO4), 1603-nm laser and amplifier. In the first of 2 experiments, a 10-mm-long Er3 :YVO4 slab, cut with its c-axis perpendicular to the laser cavity axis, was pumped in -polarization and lased in -polarization. The laser operated in a quasi-continuous wave regime with nearly 9-W output power and a slope efficiency of about 39 percent with respect to absorbed power. In a second demonstration, a 25-mm-long Er:YVO4 slab was pumped in -polarization to amplify a -polarized 1,603-nm fiber-coupled diode source to achieve a small signal gain of 2.1 with a duty cycle of up to 25 . To the best of my knowledge, these have demonstrated the highest efficiency and highest power from an Er3 :YVO4 laser and the first use of Er:YVO4 as a nonresonantly pumped amplifier as pumped in the 970- to 980-nm absorption band.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2016
Accession Number
AD1016620

Entities

People

  • George A. Newburgh

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Absorption
  • Amplifiers
  • Continuous Waves
  • Detectors
  • Efficiency
  • Elements
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Laser Amplifiers
  • Laser Diodes
  • Laser Mediums
  • Laser Radar
  • Laser Resonators
  • Lasers
  • Polarization
  • Vanadium Compounds
  • Waveplates

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy