Thermally managed ring-cavity design enables LED-pumped Nd,Ce:YAG continuous wave single-longitudinal-mode laser for cost-effective precision photonics

Abstract We present a continuous wave (CW) single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) laser with a ring cavity based on efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs)-pumped Nd,Ce:YAG dual-rod laser modules. In the free-running regime, a maximum average power of 4.27 W at 1064 nm is obtained, corresponding to the highest optical conversion efficiency of 5.1% and a slope efficiency of 13.9%. When operating in SLM configuration, the laser maintains a stable CW output of 200 mW with beam quality factors ( M 2 ) measuring 1.44 and 1.30 along orthogonal x - and y -axes respectively. Spectral analysis reveals an emission linewidth of 70.76 MHz at maximum SLM output. This work represents, to the authors’ knowledge, both the first successful implementation and the highest recorded performance characteristics for an LED-pumped Nd,Ce:YAG CW SLM laser system utilizing ring cavity configuration.