Optically-pumped saturable absorber for fast switching between continuous-wave and passively mode-locked regimes of a Nd:YVO4 laser

Savitski, V.G. and Burns, D. and Calvez, S. (2009) Optically-pumped saturable absorber for fast switching between continuous-wave and passively mode-locked regimes of a Nd:YVO4 laser. Optics Express, 17 (7). pp. 5373-5378. ISSN 1094-4087 (https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.17.005373)

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Abstract

We report on the fast (~50 μs) remote-controlled switching between continuous-wave (cw), cw mode-locked (ML) and Q-switched ML modes of operation of a Nd:YVO4 laser using an optically-pumped saturable absorber (SA). Pulses as short as 40 ps with an average output power of 0.5 W are obtained in cw ML regime.