Compact picosecond mode-locked and cavity-dumped Nd:YVO4 laser.

We report on a diode pumped, semiconductor saturable absorber mirror mode-locked picosecond Nd:YVO(4) oscillator with cavity-dumping. In pure cw-mode-locking this laser produced up to 17W of average power at a pulse repetition rate of 9.7MHz, corresponding to a pulse energy of 1.7microJ. Using an electro-optic cavity dumper, we achieved average powers up to 7.8W at 500kHz and 10W at 1MHz dumping rate. With corresponding pulse energies of 15.6microJ and 10microJ respectively and pulsewidths around 10ps, this laser could become a compact source for materials processing applications, alternative to more complex schemes such as regenerative amplifiers or ultra-long resonator oscillators.