Investigation of a versatile pulsed laser source based on a diode seed and ultra-high gain bounce geometry amplifiers.

We present an investigation of a versatile pulsed laser source using a low power, gain-switched diode laser with independently variable repetition rate and pulse duration to seed an ultra-high gain Nd:YVO4 bounce geometry amplifier system at 1064nm. Small-signal gain as high as 50dB was demonstrated in a bounce geometry pre-amplifier from just 24W pumping, with good preservation of TEM00 beam quality. The single amplifier is shown to be limited by amplified spontaneous emission. Study is made of further scaling with a second power amplifier, achieving average output power of ~14W for a pulsed diode seed input of 188μW. This investigation provides some guidelines for using the bounce amplifier to obtain flexible pulse amplification of low-power seed sources to reach scientifically and commercially useful power levels.