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Pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser, a passively Q-switched laser oscillation from an unprocessed Nd:LaB3O6 cleavage microchip with a Cr4+:YAG saturable absorber has been demonstrated. The influence of the transmission of the output coupler on the pulse width and repetition rate at various absorbed pump powers has been investigated. A pulse with 2.8 μJ energy, 2.2 ns duration, and 29 kHz repetition rate at 1060 nm was obtained at the absorbed pump power of 1.25 W and output coupler transmission of 3.2%, which results in 1.25 kW peak power. The polarization and spectral properties of laser radiation were measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passively Q-switched laser oscillation at 1060 nm from an unprocessed Nd:LaB3O6 cleavage microchip with a Cr4+:YAG saturable absorber has been demonstrated. The influence of absorbed pump power, output coupler transmission and cavity length on the output pulse characteristics has been investigated. For a plano-concave cavity with a cavity length of 28 mm, pulse with 100 mW average output power, 4.0 μJ energy, 17 ns duration, 25 kHz repetition rate, and 0.24 kW, peak power was obtained at the absorbed pump power of 1.42 W and output coupler transmission of 3.5%. For a plano-plano cavity with a cavity length of 5 mm, pulse with 85 mW average output power, 2.1 μJ energy, 2.3 ns duration, 40 kHz repetition rate, and 0.89 kW, peak power was obtained at the absorbed pump power of 1.42 W and output coupler transmission of 5.6%. Because a chopper with a 5% duty cycle was employed in the experiments to reduce the influence of pump-induced thermal loading, the above average output powers were obtained at the 5% duty cycle and extrapolated to 100%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method utilizing an unprocessed cleavage microchip as the solid-state laser gain medium is proposed. Pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser at 871 nm, 1060 nm continuous-wave laser emission with slope efficiency of 23% has been achieved in an unprocessed microchip directly obtained from a cleavage Nd3+:LaB3O6 crystal. Based on this method, it is possible to avoid the difficulty of the microchip gain medium processing and largely lower the cost of solid-state lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]