Stability of LD pumped passively Q -switched solid-state lasers

For the laser diode pumped Cr,Nd∶YAG passively Q -switched Nd:YVO 4 laser, in order to improve the stability of the Q -switched pulses, a long cavity is adopted, and the gain medium is located at the middle of the cavity. In the experiments, stable pulses are obtained. At the maximum incident pump power of 17.5W, the repetition rate increases to 71.3 kHz and the pulse width (FWHM) is narrowed to 0.4μs. The pulse-to-pulse amplitude fluctuation is less than ±10%. The inter-pulse timing jitter of the Q -switched pulse train is found to be less than ±3.5%.