Eye-Safe Picosecond Solid-State Nd:YAG Ceramic Laser at 1.44 μm

Abstract:
We report on a passively mode-locked Nd:YAG transparent ceramic laser with semiconductor saturable absorber mirror at an eye-safe wavelength of 1.44 μm. With the increase of incident pump power, the laser went through three oscillation stages: Q-switched mode locking (QML), continuous wave mode locking (CWML), QML and remained at 1443 nm single wavelength output. The maximum average output power of the CWML laser was about 842 mW. The pulse width was measured to be 20.8 ps assuming a Gauss shape.