The 2.94 μm Er:YAG laser Q-switched mechanically by a rotating mirror was developed. The laser generated pulses of 30 mJ energy and duration below 290 ns, which corresponds to over 100 kW peak power. It operated at the repetition rate of up to 25 Hz. To our knowledge it is the most powerful erbium laser operating at so high repetition rate. The developed laser can be successfully applied in medicine -e.g. in microsurgery of soft biological tissues.Laser beam interaction with a gelatin sample

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An all-fiber, gain-switched, single-mode, thulium-doped silica fiber laser operating at a wavelength of 1994.6 nm was developed. The laser was pumped by a 1.55 μm master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system and operated at a repetition rate ranging from 50 to 300 kHz. Different configurations of the laser cavity were tested. When operating at a 100 kHz repetition rate the laser delivered a maximum average power as high as 1.08 W with a slope efficiency of 49%. For a repetition rate of 50 kHz, stable 23 ns pulses with an energy of 15.3 μJ, corresponding to a peak power of 623 W, were achieved. We also report, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of 2 μm gain-switched, mode-locked pulses with 100% modulation depth obtained in a Tm-doped fiber laser.

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