High-average power Nd:YVO4 regenerative amplifier seeded by a gain switched diode laser

We report on a Nd:YVO 4 regenerative amplifier (RA), end pumped by 888 nm-diode lasers. The output power was about 46W at repetition rates from 150 to 833kHz with an M 2 -factor of 1.2. The amplifier was seeded by a gain switched diode laser, generating pulses with a duration of 65 ps and a pulse energy of ≈ 5 pJ. The high gain of the RA of more than 70 dB provides amplified pulse energies as high as 180μJ. Bifurcations of the pulse energy could be avoided. Pulse amplitude fluctuations of only 1.2% for 10,000 consecutive pulses were measured. The long term output power stability of the laboratory setup was 0.3%.