First demonstration of a LED-side-pumped acousto-optic Q-switched Nd:YAG rod laser with high repetition rate and beam quality operation

We demonstrate an acousto-optic Q-switched LED-pumped laser with high repetition rate and beam quality with a compact linear cavity. By optimizing design of the LED-pumped Nd:YAG rod laser, a maximum average power of 2.5 W at 1063.92 nm laser with duration of 1.34 μs is achieved, corresponding to an optical efficiency of 8% and a slope efficiency of 10.7%. After optimizing the resonator configuration with an acousto-optic Q-switched modulation, a 1.2 W average output power of pulsed laser with duration of 296 ns is obtained with a peak power of 810 W at a repetition rate of 5 KHz. The beam quality factors of Mx2 = 2.12 and My2 = 1.77 are obtained through mode selection by pinhole. To the best of our ability, this is the best high repetition rate and beam quality of an acousto-optic Q-switched LED pumped laser oscillator with watt-level output reported so far, which means that LED pumped solid-state lasers will make breakthroughs in various scientific and technological applications. •First demonstration of a LED-side-pumped acousto-optic Q-switched Nd:YAG rod laser with high repetition rate and beam quality operation.•Realize Watt-level actively Q-switched laser with LED-pumped Nd:YAG module for the first time.•Explore the new technical scheme to realize more efficient LED-pumped Nd:YAG module.