High peak power, high-repetition rate passively Q-switching of a holmium ceramic laser

Abstract

We demonstrated a high peak power, high repetition rate Cr2+:ZnS passively Q-switched (PQS) Ho:YAG ceramic laser. Particularly, the influence of the initial transmission of the saturable absorber (SA) on the laser performance was investigated with two kinds of SAs. Finally, the laser generated average output power of 10.3 W and the stable 13.3 ns, 1.02 mJ pulses were achieved at a 10.1 kHz repetition rate. In addition, the highest peak power of 75.9 kW was obtained, to our best knowledge, which was also the highest peak power achieved in a ~2 µm PQS ceramic laser, corresponding to the intra-cavity peak power of 0.23 MW.