LED-pumped Picosecond and Nanosecond Laser Amplifiers

A light-emitting diode is a low-energy-density light source, which is usually disadvantageous for building a high-gain laser
amplifier. Here, we report LED-pumped nanosecond 4-pass and picosecond regenerative Nd:YAG laser amplifiers with
output peak powers of 11 and 60 MW, respectively, at 1064 nm. With the slight broadband LED pumping, the measured
stability of the pulse energy is within 3% over 40 minutes for the regenerative amplifier.