We present experimental results that show how diode-pumped Tm:YLF can be used to develop the next generation of lasers with high peak and high average power. We demonstrate the production of broad bandwidth, λ≈ 1.9 μm wavelength, high energy pulses with up to 1.6 J output energy and subsequent compression to sub-300 fs duration. This was achieved using a single 8-pass amplifier to boost stretched approximately 50 μJ pulses to the Joule-level. Furthermore, we show the average power capability of this material in a helium gas-cooled amplifier head, achieving a heat removal rate almost ten times higher than the state-of-the-art, surpassing 20 W/cm2. These demonstrations illustrate the capabilities of directly diode-pumped Tm:YLF to support TW to PW-class lasers at kW average power.
We present experimental demonstrations of the energy density storage and extraction capabilities of Tm:YLF using a table-top diode-pumped system. Here, a Tm:YLF-based oscillator, producing mJ-class pulse energies within both short (nanosecond) and long (millisecond) duration pulses, seeds a single far-field multiplexed power amplifier. The amplifier produced pulse energies up to 21.7 J in 20 ns (>1 GW peak power) using a 4-pass configuration, and 108.3 J in a long duration pulse using a 6-pass configuration. Additionally, the system was reconfigured and operated in a burst mode, amplifying a 6.8 kHz few-ms duration burst of 36 pulses up to 3.6 kW average power. An optical-to-optical efficiency of 19% was achieved during the quasi-steady-state amplification, with an individual pulse fluence over an order of magnitude lower than the saturation fluence.
We present the first demonstration of a multi-joule diode-pumped Tm:YLF amplifier. The compact demonstrator setup, consisting of a Tm:YLF-based oscillator producing ~20mJ, 20ns pulses at 1880nm wavelength that seeds a diode pumped four-pass Tm:YLF power amplifier, generated pulse energies up to 3.9J with a maximum net gain exceeding 200. No saturation effects were observed within this amplifier, as the output pulse energies increased exponentially with the input pump power. When the amplifier was seeded with the free-running oscillator, with pulse durations still significantly shorter than the 15ms radiative lifetime of Tm:YLF, energies of up to 38J were achieved. To the best of our knowledge, this represents over a 100-fold improvement in the highest reported pulse energy from a Tm:YLF amplifier, and nearly an order of magnitude higher energy than any laser operating near 2μm. These results show that Tm:YLF, when operated in an efficient high repetition rate extraction regime and combined with a high-capacity heat removal technique, has the potential to enable a new class of efficient, high peak and average power laser systems to meet the demands of next generation scientific and industrial applications.
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