ELS Electronic Laser System (Fort Worth, TX) has released the PowerDisk regenerative laser system that produces pulses with up to 25 mJ energy and 10-ns duration at 1 kHz. The repetition rate can be selected between 1 kHz and 100 kHz. The system is based on the VersaDisk thin-disk laser as a seed laser. The fundamental wavelength can be set between 1010 nm and 1055 nm. To narrow the linewidth of the seed laser to 5 MHz, an etalon is inserted into the optical cavity.

The output of the VersaDisk laser is modulated with an ultra-fast pockels cell to produce a 10-ns pulse. The output beam is then expanded to match the required beam diameter for the regenerative amplifier, which also uses thin-disk technology. The core module is identical to the arrangement in the VersaDisk seed laser, and all advantages of the thin-disk technology are maintained. The captured pulses travel within the regenerative amplifier until the available amplification has been used. High peak power is achieved, as well as superior beam profile. The high peak power is suitable as a foundation for frequency multiplying stages down to the deep UV. Applications includes spectroscopy and micro-material processing.


Topics:
Photonics