ABSTRACT
Neodymium (Nd)-doped solid state lasers play important roles in industrial, scientific, and medical fields. Neodymium-doped yttrium vanadate (Nd:YVO4) with its advantage of remarkably large emission cross section and strong pump-beam absorption results in a compact and efficient high-gain solid-state laser, generating short pulse, at high Q-switching repetition rate. Consequently, Nd:YVO4 lasers are widely used in the microprocessing field. Neodymium-doped lithium yttrium fluoride (Nd:YLF) has a long fluorescence lifetime and is suitable for the generation of high-energy laser pulses. The crystal structure of Nd:YLF gives natural birefringence, thus providing linearly polarized output. In an end-pumped system, the pump light enters through the “end” of the laser crystal. The pump-light axis and laser oscillation axis are parallel. End pumping results in higher mode matching overlap, higher absorption efficiency, and higher pump density. Side-pump configurations are considered to be suitable for high-power multitransverse-mode systems.
