Compared with Nd:YAG, the traditional high power solid state laser gain medium, Yb:YAG has less quantum defect, no excited state absorption, and longer fluorescence lifetime, which makes it suitable for Q-switched laser. In addition, concentration quenching is absent in Yb:YAG, higher concentration of active ion makes the thickness of gain medium thinner. For ring cavities, the necessity of symmetrical beam path is important, a thinner Yb:YAG crystal can reduce the shift of optical beam path and avoids cavity unstability. Thus, Yb:YAG is suitable for the two-mirror ring cavity. In this study, a compact and efficient Yb:YAG ring laser with 50.3% slope efficiency was demonstrated. And the Yb:YAG ring laser performances influenced by thermal effect was analyzed and compared to that of Nd:YAG ring laser. The polarization of ring lasers with different configurations were also discussed. In manufacturing process, the coating design on gain medium and laser mirrors were introduced. The advantages of passively Q-switched laser are efficient, compact, simple setup and no complicated driving circuits. They make passively Q-switched laser suitable for various applications, such as nonlinear optics, medical treatment, micromachining, material processing, and range finder. Due to spontaneous noise from the gain medium, conventional passively Q-switched laser has large timing jitter. This study is to build up a passively Q-switched Yb:YAG/Cr4+:YAG ring laser with lower timing jitter. At present, a Q-switched ring laser with a peak power of 208 W and a pulse width of 33 ns, was developed. Its slope efficiency is 18.1% with a timing jitter of 11.9%. To our knowledge, this is the first passively Q-switched Yb:YAG/Cr4+:YAG ring laser.

The purpose of this study is to develop a solid-state blue laser which has advantages of high power, short wavelength, and compact. It can be applied in micromaching, LIDAR, underwater ranging, biochemical techniques, and so forth. We increased the peak power of the laser effectively by a low-cost, small, and easy-use passive Q-switching technique. In addition, intracavity frequency-doubling is an economic way to achieve non-linear frequency conversion for blue generation. By integrating of these two techniques, we develop a compact all solid-state high-power blue laser with 83 W peak power at 473 nm. Restricted to reabsorption loss, the optical to optical conversion efficiency of 4F3/2 ¡÷ 4I9/2 quasi-three-level laser is lower than 4F3/2 ¡÷ 4I11/2 four-level laser for Nd:YAG crystal. The reabsorption loss will change with the temperature variation of the gain medium, it enormously affects to the performance and stability of quasi-three-level lasers. Therefore, in addition to make systematic studies of the conversion efficiency of KNbO3, BBO, LBO as the intracavity SHG crystals for generation of high-power blue laser, we use the numerical analysis to investigate the influence of reabsorption loss to quasi-three-level passive Q-switching laser. At present, blue laser with peak power of 83 W and pulse width of 10.6 ns was generated as a result. To our knowledge, the compact all solid-state high-power pulsed blue laser is demonstrated for the first time by integrating of passive Q-switching and intracavity frequency-doubling simultaneously.

In this dissertation I report the development of high power pulsed fiber laser systems. These systems utilize phosphate glass fiber for active elements, instead of the industry-standard silica fiber. Because the phosphate glass allows for much higher doping of rare-earth ions than silica fibers, much shorter phosphate fibers can be used to achieve the same gain as longer silica fibers.This single-frequency laser technology was used to develop an all-fiber actively Q-switched fiber lasers. A short cavity is used to create large spacing between longitudinal modes. Using this method, we demonstrated the first all-fiber Q-switched fiber laser in the 1 micron region.In addition to creating high peak powers with Q-switched lasers, created even higher powers using fiber amplifier systems. High power fiber lasers typically produce spectral broadening through the nonlinear effects of stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brullion scattering, and self-phase modulation. The thresholds for these nonlinearities scale inversely with intensity and length. Thus, we used a short phosphate fiber gain stage to reduce the length, and a large core fiber final stage to reduce intensity. In this way we were able to generate high peak power pulses while avoiding visible nonlinearities, and keeping a narrow bandwidth.The immediate goal of developing these high power fiber laser systems was to generate narrowband terahertz radiation. Two different wavelengths were combined into the final amplifier stage at orthogonal polarizations. These were collimated and directed into a GaSe crystal, which has a very high figure of merit for THz generation. The two wavelengths combined in the crystal through the process of nonlinear difference frequency generation. This produced a narrowband beam of THz pulses, at higher powers than previous narrowband THz pulses produced by eyesafe fiber lasers.

The thulium fiber laser has gained interest due to its long emission wavelength, large bandwidth (~1.8 – 2.1 µm), high efficiencies (~60 %), and high output power levels both in cw as well as pulsed regimes. Applications like remote sensing, machining, medical tissue ablation, and mid-infrared generation benefit from high peak power thulium laser sources. Pulsed thulium fiber laser systems are advancing rapidly towards higher peak power levels and are becoming the preferred sources for these applications. This dissertation work describes the development of novel nanosecond pulsed thulium fiber laser systems with record high peak power levels targeting mid-infrared generation. The peak power scaling in thulium fiber lasers requires new fiber designs with larger mode field area (MFA) than commercially available step index large mode area (SI-LMA) fibers. Two different prototypes of thulium doped photonic crystal fibers (PCF) were investigated for high peak power generation. The first prototype is a flexible-PCF with MFA twice as large as SILMA fiber and the second prototype is a PCF-rod with six times larger MFA. A robust single stage master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) source based on flexible-PCF was developed. This source provided narrow linewidth, tunable wavelength, variable pulse duration, high peak power, and high energy nanosecond pulses. The PCF-rod was implemented as a second stage power amplifier. This system generated a record level of ~1 MW peak power output with 6.4 ns pulse-duration at 1 kHz repetition rate. This thulium doped PCF based MOPA system is a state of the art laser source providing high quality nanosecond pulses. iv The single stage MOPA system was successfully implemented to pump a zinc germanium phosphide (ZGP) crystal in an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) cavity to generate 3 - 5 µm wavelengths. The MOPA source was also used to demonstrate backside machining in silicon wafer. The PCF based laser system demonstrated an order of magnitude increase in the peak power achievable in nanosecond thulium doped fiber laser systems, and further scaling appears possible. The increase in peak power will enable additional capabilities for mid-infrared generation and associated applications.

Of all the Q-switching methods employed to operate a laser in giant pulse mode one of the simplest and most regularly used methods involves a rotating Porro prism. In this Thesis, experimental results are reported which show good agreement with predictions based on a rate equation model. The results indicate that it is possible to design a rotating prism Q-switched laser on the basis of those rate equations, and that the design when realized, should perform close to expectations. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Le développement des sources supercontinuum a engendré des avancées majeures dans de nombreux domaines tels que la spectroscopie, la métrologie ou encore la biologie avec la tomographie optique cohérente. Récemment, l'arrivée des fibres à cristaux photoniques (FCPs) a permis la fabrication de telles sources avec des lasers impulsionnels de pompe moins puissants. Ainsi, de par leur compatibilité avec les fibres optiques, les lasers impulsionnels réalisés en optique intégrée sur verre semblent une alternative intéressante pour la réalisation d'une source supercontinuum intégrée. Notre travail a donc eu pour objectif l'étude et la réalisation d'un laser impulsionnel déclenché par modulation passive des pertes assez puissant et compatible avec les fibres à cristaux photoniques dans le but de générer un supercontinuum. Nous avons alors conçu et fabriqué ce laser constitué d'un guide d'onde amplificateur réalisé par échange d'ions dans un verre dopé au néodyme et d'une cavité Fabry-Perot fermée par un miroir diélectrique en entrée et sans miroir de sortie ce qui permet un couplage direct avec une fibre optique. L'hybridation de l'absorbant saturable sous la forme d'une couche mince d'acétate de cellulose dopée au BDN sur le guide d'onde a permis la génération d'impulsions ayant une puissance crête de (2,8 ± 0,6) kW. La source supercontinuum réalisé avec une FCP pompée par le laser préalablement étudié présente un spectre allant de 440 nm à 1600 nm. Les perspectives de cette étude portent sur le changement de matériau absorbant saturable pour permettre l'émission d'impulsions plus puissantes, ainsi que sur l'intégration monolithique de la FCP pour réaliser un dispositif encore plus compact. Elles portent aussi sur la réalisation de lasers intégrés à modes bloqués utilisant cette technologie. Nous avons démontré sa faisabilité ainsi que son régime de fonctionnement en soliton dissipatif. Des caractérisations préliminaires ont également été effectuées. / Supercontinuum sources made possible major break through in spectroscopy metrology and biology like the development of optical coherent tomography. Photonics crystal fiber have been useful for supercontinuum generation allowing the use of relatively low peak power pulsed laser sources. Regarding this kind of devices, pulsed lasers made by integrated optics on glass seemed to be a good candidate. The aims of this work were hence to develop and realize Q-switched lasers for photonic crystal fiber pumping. We demonstrated the possibility to realize a supercontinuum source pumped by an integrated Q-switched laser made by ion exchange on Neodymium doped glass. The Fabry-Perot cavity used is closed by a dielectric mirror on one hand and by the waveguide facet on the other side allowing direct coupling with optical fiber. The saturable absorber has been hybridized on the amplifying waveguide to interact with the evanescent wave. (2.8 ± 0.6) kW peak-power pulses have been generated, which coupled in a photonic crystal fiber, generated a 440 nm to 1600 nm large supercontinuum. As a perspective, a mode-locked laser realized with the same technology has been demonstrated. We show that this laser operates in dissipative soliton regime. This laser is then preliminary characterized.