High-gain diode-pumped amplifier for generation of microjoule-level picosecond pulses

Opt Express. 2006 Oct 2;14(20):9244-9. doi: 10.1364/oe.14.009244.

Abstract

A diode-pumped single-pass amplifier system relying on two grazing-incidence Nd:YVO(4) slabs was developed to increase the energy of low-repetition-rate pulses from a decimated low-power cw mode-locked oscillator. Single-pass unsaturated gain up to 1.3x10(5) was achieved, and amplified pulses of 10-muJ energy and 8.0-ps duration were obtained. Efficient second harmonic generation (SHG) at 532 nm was achieved, as well as traveling-wave parametric conversion in the range 770-1020 nm (signal) and 1110-1720 nm (idler).