Compact stable passively Q-switched flash lamp pumped Nd:YAG laser with Graded Reflectivity Mirror

Abstract

In this article we present a compact stable passively Q-switched Nd:YAG laser resonator with natural cooling. The major advantage of this laser is beam profile with rather small divergence which could be reached by applying a Graded Reflectivity Mirror as an output coupler in the laser cavity. In this work we show the testing of such a laser resonator with different Graded Reflectivity Mirrors. During the testing of this laser cavity, maximum output energy of 35 mJ was reached in the pulse duration of 14ns. The beam divergence is not more than 1.2 mrad.