Cavity dumping of single 19 ps pulses from passively mode-locked quasi-continuously pumped highly doped Nd:YAG laser

The common approach for a picosecond laser source with output energy in millijoule level is a continuously pumped mode locked oscillator with single pulse selector followed by a regenerative amplifier. Systems can operate with repetition rates up to 100 kHz with single pulse duration around 10 ps. For many applications, as for example laser ranging, lasers operating at repetition rates below 1 kHz with longer pulse durations are more suitable. Such pulses can be obtained from passively mode-locked lasers with pulsed pumping, where the microjoule pulses are generated directly from oscillators and simple single or double pass amplifiers are sufficient for additional pulse amplification. Recently we reported about development of a 0.8 mJ laser with output pulse duration of 113 ps, where for passive mode-locking special semiconductor saturable absorbers with 100 quantum wells were used under Brewster angle in resonator in transmission mode [1].