What are the advantages of diode pumping in solid state lasers?
• The compactness of the pump source, the power supply and the cooling arrangement makes the whole laser system much smaller and easier to use. • A high electrical-to-optical efficiency of the pump source (order of 50%) leads to a high overall power efficiency i.e. wall plug efficiency of the laser. As a consequence, small power supplies are needed, and both the electricity consumption and the cooling demands are drastically reduced, comparing with those for lamp-pumped lasers. • The narrow optical bandwidth of diode lasers makes it possible to directly pump certain transitions of laser-active ions without losing power in other spectral regions. It thus also contributes to a high efficiency. • Although the beam quality of high power diode lasers is poor, however, end pumping of lasers provide very good overlap of laser mode and pump region, leading to high beam quality and power efficiency. • Diode-pumped low-power lasers can be pumped with diffraction-limited laser diodes. This allows
