The principle of laser action was first experimentally demonstrated in 1960 by T. Maiman (Maiman, 1960). This first system was a solid-state laser in which a ruby crystal and a flashlamp served as gain medium and pump source, respectively. Soon after this first laser experiment, it was realized that solid-state lasers are highly attractive sources for various scientific and industrial applicati...

The development of a space-qualifiable 2-micron laser is beneficial to both the Exploration and Earth science technology goals. Recently, significant advancements in the laser development have been made under the Laser Risk Reduction Program. One Joule per pulse energy was achieved by a Master-Oscillator-Power-Amplifier (MOPA) system. To our knowledge, it is the highest recorded energy at this ...

This is the final report of a three-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The goal of this project is to develop a solid state laser that produces visible output wavelengths, including the commercially compelling blue wavelength. The basic architecture of the device consists of a single-mode optical fiber doped with Pr3+ and ...

In this master thesis project, a solid-state red-green-blue (RGB) laser was built. The project consisted of two parts. In the first part, an actively Q-switched diode-pumped solid-state laser was constructed. As laser gain medium, a Nd:YVO4 crystal, which lased at 1064 nm, was used. The Q-switch was a home built electrooptic modulator based on two RTP crystals. The modulator had a shortest rise...

Diode laser-pumped solid-state lasers are efficient, compact, all solid-state sources of coherent optical radiation. Major advances in solid-state laser technology have historically been preceded by advances in pumping technology. The helical flash lamps used to pump early ruby lasers were superseded by the linear flash lamp and arc lamp now used to pump neodymium-doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet ...

Solid-state lasers are typically limited by adverse thermal effects within the gain medium. In this Letter we describe a new method for dramatically reducing thermal effects in an end-pumped solid-state laser by incorporating a rotating intracavity periscope in the resonator to spatially separate the lasing and thermal processes. In contrast with previous examples of moving solid-state lasers, ...