Watt-level passively Q-switched Tm:YVO4 laser with few-layer WSe2 saturable absorber

Abstract In this paper, we reported a watt-level passively Q-switched Tm:YVO4 laser using few-layer WSe2 nanosheets as the saturable absorber. Under an absorbed pump power of 9.65 W, a maximum average output power of 1.13 W at 1925.6 nm was obtained with shortest pulse duration of 446 ns at repetition rate of 66.8 kHz, corresponding to single pulse energy of 16.9 µJ and peak power of 38 W. At the maximum average output power of the passively Q-switched Tm:YVO4 laser, the beam quality factors (M2) in the horizontal direction and vertical direction were estimated to be 1.36 and 1.27, respectively.