Nonlinear mirror mode-locking of efficiently diode-pumped pulsed neodymium lasers

We report the development of compact, efficiently diode-pumped Nd:YAG and Nd:YAlO3 lasers in a pulsed regime, mode locked by a nonlinear mirror (NLM) technique. Pumping with an 80-W single-bar diode array at a repetition rate as high as 200 Hz and depending on the NLM configuration, trains of 20–100 pulses, with 25-ps pulses with energies as high as 9 μJ each, are generated. These novel pulsed picosecond sources show excellent amplitude stability (<2% amplitude fluctuation) and beam quality. Numerical simulations of the pulse-formation dynamics are presented, and the results are compared with the experiments.