Femtosecond laser micromachined ridge waveguide lasers in Nd:YAG ceramics

We report on the fabrication of ridge waveguides in Nd:YAG ceramic by using femtosecond laser micromachining of the surface of a He ion implanted planar waveguide. Under optical pump of 808 nm light, continuous wave waveguide lasers have been realized at 1.06 μm at room temperature in the Nd:YAG ceramic ridge waveguide system, reaching a maximum output power of 46 mW. The lasing threshold of ∼64.9 mW and the slope efficiency of 42.5% are obtained for the ridge waveguide system, which shows superior lasing performance to the Nd:YAG ceramic planar waveguide.The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 10925524), the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) through Consolider Program SAUUL CSD2007-00013, Project FIS2009-09522 and Junta de Castilla y León (Project SA086A12-2). S.Z. acknowledges the funding by the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF-VHNG-713). Support from the Centro de L seres Pulsados (CLPU) is also acknowledged