| Electrical discharge of one or more flash-lamps under high voltage in an optical cavity, has been well established as an excitative mechanism for pulsed lasers, since the simultaneous discoveries of the optical maser and the first ruby laser in 1958–60. Diode laser excitation of crystals is relatively new but have been proven as the generator of efficient, mobile, reliable and scalable lasers and laser systems, with numerous applications in a variety of arenas including, remote sensing, manufacturing, global & local data communications, medicine, and telecommunications including communications through intranets and the global information superhighway (the internet), for electronic Commerce and multimedia interactions. As a suitable model for our diode-pumped experiments and analysis, we have considered the basic concepts of pulsed or flash-lamps and diode-pumped Nd:YAG lasers in Chapter 1. Also we have utilized identically constructed optical cavities for our Nd:YAG and Nd:KGW rods and slabs, to qualitatively and quantitatively compare for the first time, the results of high voltage flash-lamp and high power diode laser pumping of Nd:YAG and Nd:KGW laser materials in the specified situations outlined above.; Preliminarily, we setup our experiments in the pulsed mode of laser operation at 1064 nm. We have used identical cylindrical rods and rectangularly symmetric slabs of Nd:YAG & Nd:KGW in an input energy range of 1–25 Joules and we have shown that pulsed Nd:KGW laser rods, near 1064 nm and with many different dopant concentrations of Nd3+ ions, is more than two times more efficient than Nd:YAG laser rods under similar experimental conditions. To generate quality lasers at many tunable wavelengths, in terms of excitation by a diode laser, we have used 10 W and 240 W fiber coupled diode lasers as the pumping sources and compared the results of the diode pumped lasers from Nd:KGW and Nd:YAG rods and slabs doped with low dopant concentrations of Nd3+ ions and emitting near 1064 nm and 1300 nm under similar conditions. |
