US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Brian J Cole

Lew Goldberg

John E Nettleton

Dallas N Barr

An actively Q-switched laser based on UV illumination mitigates pyroelectric effects in lithium niobate. An exemplary embodiment comprises a pump source; a dichroic mirror having one end optically facing said pump source; a gain medium optically facing another end of said dichroic mirror; a polarizer having one end optically facing another end of said gain medium; a quarter wave plate having one end optically facing another end of said polarizer; and a electro-optic crystal having one end optically facing said quarter wave plate, at least one side of said electro-optic crystal being electrically connected to Q-switch driver to have the crystal function as a Q-switch. A UV illumination source illuminates a side surface of said electrical-optic crystal with UV light. An output mirror receives an output from said Q-switch and produces a laser emission.

UV illumination for mitigation of cold temperature pyroelectric effects in lithium niobate

A method and device for reducing the timing jitter in a passive Q-switched Nd:YAG solid state laser by spatially selective bleaching a thin sheet of a saturable absorber of Cr:YAG from a direction orthogonal to the direction of laser emission where the Cr:YAG transmission increases 18% when the bleaching probe beam is a single laser diode bar. For steady state operation of a passive Q-switched laser, the pulse-to-pulse timing jitter showed a &#x2212;12&#xd7; reduction in standard deviation from 241 nsec for free running operation to 20 nsec with optical triggering.

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Fairfax Station, VA, United States of America

Brian J Cole