Title :
The LUCIA* project: towards 100 Joules nanosecond pulses, kW averaged power, based on ytterbium diode pumped solid state laser
Author :
Chanteloup, J.C. ; Bourdet, G. ; Fülöp, A. ; Julien, Y. ; Migus, A.
Author_Institution :
Lab. pour l´´Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, Paris VI Univ., France
Abstract :
The LUCIA (French acronym for "Laser Ultra-Court Intenses, et Applications") laser system consists in an oscillator delivering around 1 Joule in about 10 ns, followed by a multipass two-heads amplifier stage. In our design, oscillator and amplifier stages are longitudinally pumped at 10 Hz with respectively 15 and 10 kW/cm2 intensity with 1 ms pulses, allowing close to 20% optical efficiency. The diode pumped Yb:YAG lasers are particularly good candidate for such an application, because centimeter-scale size aperture YAG crystal are easily available, because of reduced heat dissipation. it is concluded that the pulsed solid state lasers able to deliver large energy in the nanosecond regime with a high repetition rate, 10 Hz at least, will be the basic component for the new generation of high energy lasers. These characteristics lead indeed to diode pumped devices and rare-earth doped media based materials.
Keywords :
aluminium compounds; high-speed optical techniques; laser beam applications; optical materials; optical pumping; solid lasers; ytterbium; yttrium compounds; 1 J; 1 ms; 10 Hz; 10 ns; 100 J; 20 percent; LUCIA project; YAG crystal; YAG:Nd; YAl5O12:Nd; Yb:YAG lasers; amplifier stage; centimeter-scale size aperture; diode pumped device; energy laser; laser system; multipass two-heads amplifier stage; nanosecond regime; optical efficiency; oscillator stage; pulsed solid state lasers; rare-earth doped media; reduced heat dissipation; repetition rate; Diodes; Laser excitation; Optical amplifiers; Optical pulse generation; Optical pulses; Oscillators; Pulse amplifiers; Pump lasers; Solid lasers; Ytterbium;
Conference_Titel :
Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe, 2003. CLEO/Europe. 2003 Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7734-6
DOI :
10.1109/CLEOE.2003.1312068
