High Power Q-Switched Dual-End-Pumped Ho:YAG Laser

We report the high power acousto-optically Q-switched operation of a dual-end-pumped Ho:YAG laser at room temperature. For the Q-swithched mode, a maximum pulse energy of 2.4 mJ and a minimum pulse width of 23 ns at the repetition rate of 10 kHz are achieved, resulting in a peak power of 104.3 kW. The beam quality factor of M ²～1.5, which is demonstrated by a knife-edge method. In addition, the Ho:YAG laser is employed as a pumping source of ZGP optical parametric oscillator, and its total average output power is 13.2 W at 3.9 μm and 4.4 μm with a slope efficiency of 68.4%.