Yb: YAG laser

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A Yb: YAG laser (pronounced: Ytterbium-YAG laser) is a solid-state laser that uses a crystal with ytterbium- doped yttrium-aluminum garnet (YAG) as an active medium and emits infrared radiation with a wavelength of 1030  nm . Since the lower laser level is only slightly above the ground state, it is a so-called quasi-3-level laser, which is usually used as a disk laser pumped by a laser diode at 941 nm . Another transition exists at 515 nm.

properties

The lower laser level of the Yb: YAG laser, which is very close to the ground state, means that it is already 7.6% saturated at 100 ° C. Thanks to the efficient excitation as a disk laser and the excitation and laser levels that are also close together, laser operation is nevertheless very efficient. Commercial Yb: YAG lasers are available today with continuous powers (cw) of more than 10 kW with an overall efficiency of 25%. In contrast to Nd: YAG lasers , the absorption bandwidth is considerably larger, which means that the requirements for temperature management of the pump diode lasers are lower. The wavelength of the emitted radiation is very similar to that of the Nd: YAG laser with 1064 nm.

In contrast to CO 2 lasers, the radiation from such a solid-state laser with a wavelength of 1030 nm can be guided through fiber optic cables , which makes it particularly attractive in an industrial environment - for example for material processing. In particular, the maximum optical efficiency of around 89% makes it a very promising research area.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ T. Graf: Laser. Basics of the laser beam sources Vieweg + Teubner, 2009, p. 149 ff.
  2. ^ TY Fan: Heat generation in Nd: YAG and Yb: YAG . In: IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics . tape 29 , no. 6 , 1993, pp. 1457-1459 , doi : 10.1109 / 3.234394 .