Revisiting of LED pumped bulk laser: first demonstration of Nd:YVO₄ LED pumped laser

We describe here what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first LED pumped Nd:YVO₄ laser. Near-IR LED arrays with a wavelength centered close to 850 nm were used to pump transversely the crystal. By pulsing LEDs, with a duration of the order of the laser transition lifetime, we obtained sufficient pump intensities to reach the laser threshold. At a frequency of 250 Hz, we obtained an output energy of 40 μJ at 1064 nm for an input pump energy of 7.4 mJ, which corresponds to an optical efficiency of 0.5%. Experimental results of small signal gain are compared with theoretical analysis.