First demonstration of watt-level LED-pumped actively Q-switched Nd: glass rod laser

In this paper, we demonstrated a high-performance light-emitting diodes (LEDs)-side-pumped Nd: glass rod laser with high average power at a repetition rate of 20 Hz. The LEDs-side-pumped lasers have the special advantages, like rapid switching, low thermal effects, and large mode volume, which could be effectively solve the thermal effect induced distortions of radiation and tensile stresses in Nd: glass. Under the quasi-continuous wave (QCW) operation conditions, the maximum single pulse energy of laser at 1053.75 nm was up to 211.5 mJ with a pulse duration of 1.176 ms, corresponding to the maximum output average power of 4.23 W. In the active Q-switched regime, the highest peak output power was 1.84 kW with a pulse duration of 364 ns at a repetition rate of 1 kHz, corresponding to the beam quality factor of M2 = 7.5. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an LED-pumped actively Q-switched Nd: glass rod laser with watt-level output reported so far.