Continuously tunable high-power single-longitudinal-mode Ho:YLF laser around the P12 CO<sub>2</sub> absorption line
Yunpeng Wang, Youlun Ju, Tongyu Dai, Dong Yan, Ying Chen, Xinyu Fang, Xiaoming Duan, Baoquan Yao
Abstract
A continuously tuned single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) Ho:YLF laser around the P12 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">C</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> absorption line was demonstrated. The continuous tuning range of 5.75 pm within one longitudinal mode spacing of the Ho:YLF resonator was realized by using a novel intra-cavity wedge prism device fixed on the piezoelectric transducer (PZT) as the cavity length controller. High SLM power of 11.3 W was obtained from a Ho:YLF amplifier with three crystals at the pump power of 31.8 W and master oscillator power of 323 mW, corresponding to a gain of 15.44 dB and an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 34.5%. The beam quality factors <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> of the SLM Ho:YLF amplifier in the <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mi>x</mml:mi> </mml:math> and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mi>y</mml:mi> </mml:math> directions were estimated to be 1.04 and 1.05, respectively.