Abstract

An active $Q$-switching light-emitting diode (LED)–pumped laser is demonstrated by Nd:YLF crystal with acousto-optic modulation for the first time. The spectrum-band pump characteristic is grasped to describe the essential difference between an LED pump and single-absorption-peak matching of laser-diode pump or no matching of lamp pump. An effective absorption spectrum concept is proposed to characterize the absorption features of the gain material with LED-band pumping. According to this new theory, a flat-top beam profile is designed for pumping Nd:YLF crystal with only a $14\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ peak power, resulting in 165 μJ output energy at 1047 nm. More importantly, by using the acousto-optic $Q$-switching technique, this LED-pumped Nd:YLF laser has successfully realized a ${\mathrm{TEM}}_{00}$ mode output with a pulse energy of 10.6 μJ and a pulse width of 452 ns.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

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