Experimental investigation of output pulses of a Qswitched active resonator

An experimental investigation was made of the time and energy characteristics of the ouput pulses of a YAG:Nd laser, whose Q factor was switched by an electro-optical device. The factors governing the duration of the output pulses and limiting the minimum duration were determined. The shortest pulse duration obtained for single-mode emission was 3 nsec. It was found that slow Q switching was the main cause of the saturation of the energy of the output pulses.