Temporal Control of Pulses from a High-Repetition-Rate Tunable Ti:Sapphire Laser by Active Q-switching

We investigated the lasing characteristics of a Ti:sapphire laser pumped by a pulsed high-repetition-rate Nd:YAG laser. The pump laser has a pulsewidth of 450 ns, while the Ti:sapphire laser shows a significantly shorter pulse width of 25 ns for suitably intense pumping. The energy conversion efficiency of the laser is more than 10%. To synchronize different lasers and to avoid multiple spiking during one pump pulse, we use a Brewster-cut Pockels cell in the resonator for Q-switching. The temporal profile and conversion efficiency are determined and compared to theoretical estimates.