500  W peak power cavity dumped 2  µm GaSb-based VECSEL

A single transverse mode high-pulse-energy vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) was developed. The GaSb-based VECSEL emits at a wavelength of 2.04 µm with a peak power exceeding 500 W while maintaining good beam quality. The cavity employs a Pockels cell combined with a low-loss thin film polarizer to selectively dump the intracavity energy into a 10 ns pulse. The laser has promise for incoherent LIDAR, materials processing, gas sensing, and nonlinear optics.