Lasing characteristic of new Russian laser ceramics

Lasing efficiency of neodymium-doped yttrium–aluminium garnet (YAG) ceramic samples, which were fabricated at the Fryazino Branch of the Kotelnikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, Russian Academy of Sciences and the SLPG 'Raduga' in 2016–2017, is studied under the conditions of end- and side-pumping. The efficiency of lasers based on this ceramics was 64% in the case of end-pumping and 68%–70% upon side-pumping. The laser level lifetimes are measured in ceramics with neodymium concentrations of 1, 2, 3, and 4 at %. The measured lifetimes well agree with the literature data. The dependences of the lasing threshold on the cavity length under the conditions of transverse mode locking and diode end-pumping are studied for different samples of laser ceramics in a semiconfocal cavity. In sum, the performed investigations showed that the quality of the first industrial samples of Russian laser ceramics are highly competitive in quality with the ceramics produced by Konoshima Chem. Corp., Ltd., which is considered by the laser community as an etalon.