Modeling of the self-Q-switching behavior of lasers based on chromium doped active material

The aim of this paper is to study the influence of the direct coupling of t he average lattice strains to the active ions on the behavior of a gain swi tching laser based on chromium doped active material. It is found that the resulting nonlinear time-dependent lensing effect combined with an internal aperture behaves as a saturable absorber. A resulting self-Q-switching eff ect is observed from the calculated output laser pulses. The results of our modeling are in agreement with experimental observations already reported in literature. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.