We present a study on a watt-level acousto-optically Q-switched Pr:YLF laser at three different repetition rates (10 kHz, 20 kHz, and 50 kHz) for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The corresponding average output powers and pulse widths were measured to be 1.14 W, 1.2 W, and 1.32 W, and 40 ns, 52 ns, and 80 ns, respectively. A maximum pulse energy of 0.11 mJ was obtained, corresponding to a peak power of up to 2.8 kW at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. The simulated dynamics of a fast Q-switched Pr:YLF laser is in agreement with the experiment. The laser’s ability to generate stable pulses with high peak power and short pulse width makes it highly desirable for various practical applications, such as laser machining and material processing.

Diode-pumped rare gas lasers are potential candidates for high-energy and high-beam quality laser systems. Currently, most investigations are focused on metastable Ar lasers. The Kr system has the unique advantages of higher quantum efficiency and lower discharge requirements for comparison. In this paper, a diode-pumped metastable Kr laser was demonstrated for the first time. Using a repetitively pulsed discharge at a Kr/He pressure of up to approximately 1500 Torr, metastable Kr atoms of more than 10¹³ cm^–3 were generated. Under diode pumping, the laser realized a dual-wavelength output with an average output power of approximately 100 mW and an optical conversion efficiency of approximately 10% with respect to the absorbed pump power. A kinetics study involving population distribution and evolution was conducted to analyze the laser performance.

A good thermo-optic property of strontium dodeca-aluminum oxide (SrAl12O12, SRA) host material is very advantageous to the development of high-performance lasers by doping rare-earth ions for gain medium. In this work, we report on diode-end-pumped high-performance continuous-wave and passively Q-switched Nd:SRA lasers. For continuous-wave operation, a maximum output power of 6.45 W is achieved at 1049 nm with a slope efficiency of about 41.6%. Using a Y3Al5O12 (YAG) etalon, we have firstly achieved a 1066 nm laser with a maximum output power of 4.15 W and a slope efficiency of about 27%, to the best of our knowledge. For passively Q-switched operation, with Cr4+:YAG as a saturable absorber, a maximum average output power of 1.82 W was achieved with the shortest pulse width of 18.2 ns at pulse repetition rate of 22.9 kHz. The single-pulse energy and pulse peak power were 79.4 μJ and 4.3 kW. This work has further verified that the Nd:SRA crystal is very promising for high-performance laser generation.

We demonstrate a diode-pumped femtosecond Yb:CaGdAlO₄ (Yb:CALGO) laser with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for stable mode-locking operation. A perfect beam profile is measured under 10 W output power with $M_{x}^{2}$ = 1.017 and $M_{y}^{2}$ = 1.016 in the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. At the repetition rate of 71.66 MHz, the optical pulse duration is 247 fs and the pulse energy is 140 nJ at the central wavelength of 1041 nm, corresponding to a peak power of 0.56 MW. In addition, we also generate continuous wave (CW) power of more than 15 W with TEM₀₀ mode, corresponding to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 44.1%.