Stable, intense picosecond pulse generation using intracavity GaAs

A reliable pulsed Nd:YAG laser system has been designed to produce 150-mJ pulses of 260-ps duration with a shot-to-shot standard deviation of ±5.8% and a full-angle divergence of 0.6 mrad. The stability is due to a new cavity-dumped oscillator design that uses an intracavity GaAs plate to stabilize the pulse development and inhibit large fluctuations. The resulting output pulse from the cavity-dumped oscillator is 103 µJ, with an average shot-to-shot standard deviation of ±1.1% and a full-angle divergence of 2 mrad.