Diode-side-pumped actively Q-switched Nd:YAP/YVO4 multi-Watt first-Stokes laser.

A diode-side-pumped actively Q-switched first-Stokes eye-safe laser with a Nd:YAP/YVO4 crystal is reported. Under the pump power of 250 W, a stable Raman laser at 1525 nm with an average output power of 4.5Wand pulse width of 60 ns at the pulse repetition frequency of 4.5 kHz is achieved. Another laser crystal Nd: YAG is used to carry out the contrast experiment. The output performances of these two lasers are measured and compared. The result reveals that the first-stokes Raman laser generated by the Nd:YAP/YVO4 crystal has a lower power threshold and higher Raman conversion efficiency because of the large value of the stimulated emission cross section and the fluorescence lifetime at 1342 nm of the Nd: YAP crystal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]