A High-Peak-Power Mechanically Q-Switched Tb:LiYF4 Laser in the Green Spectral Region

We report on a mechanically Q-switched Tb:LiYF4 laser at 544 nm based on an optical chopper. With appropriate chopper settings, 521 μJ, 86 ns green pulses are generated at 1 kHz, corresponding to a peak power of 6.1 kW. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest peak power generated using Tb:LiYF4 lasers to date. Numerical simulations are carried out and agree well with the experimental results, which show that the pulse energy can be further scaled to the millijoule level and the peak power to over 10 kW.