Q-switched 980 nm Yb-doped fiber laser

Summary form only given. Here, we present a Q-switched 980 nm cladding-pumped YDFL with 1.2 /spl mu/J of energy and 60 W of peak power in pulses shorter than 20 ns at repetition rates of up to /spl sim/0.2 MHz and 250 mW of average output power for repetition rates between 0.2 and 0.65 MHz. A pulsed 980 nm source with high peak power and good beam quality is attractive for frequency conversion, e.g. frequency quadrupling to 245 nm.