Compact Pulsed High Energy Er:glass laser

Bulk Erbium-doped lasers are widely used for long-distance telemetry and ranging. In some applications such as coherent Doppler radars, laser outputs with a relatively long pulse width, good beam profile and pulse shape are required. High energy Q-switched Er:glass lasers were demonstrated by use of electro-optic (E/O) Q-switching or frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) Q-switching. However, the output pulse durations in these lasers were fixed to relatively small values and extremely hard to tune. We report here on developing a novel and compact Q-switched Er:Yb co-doped phosphate glass laser at an eye-safe wavelength of 1.5 μm. A rotating mirror was used as a Q-switch. Co-linear pump scheme was used to maintain a good output beam profile. Near-perfect Gaussian temporal shape was obtained in our experiment. By changing motor rotation speed, pulse duration was tunable and up to 240 ns was achieved. In our preliminary experiment, output pulse energies of 44 mJ and 4.5 mJ were obtained in free-running and Q-switched operation modes respectively.