Hi,
The output power of Yb-doped continuous wave lasers can practically reach multi-kilowatt levels. However, the power of Yb-doped pulsed lasers with pulse durations in the picosecond and sub-picosecond range has been limited to a few hundred watts. Could this be related to the many bulk optics presented in the pulsed laser cavity?
Thanks
Yes, high-power laser pulses may cause damage to the bulk optics in laser cavity.
Besides the laser damage concern, the pico-second laser is more difficult to achieve high power than the CW laser. The pico-second pulsed laser and CW laser are generation power in different ways. CW power usually can be obtained from laser cavity with relatively high optical efficiency up to 70%-80% for Yb:YAG. On the other hand, ps pulse are generated from amplified mode-locking seed laser with very small average power in the range of tens of milli watts and amplified to the several hundred watts. The optical effieciency to amplify small seed is typically less than 20%, much smaller than that of CW cavity. Finally, from application, ps laser has very high peak power, several hundred watts is adequate for most application.
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