Optically-pumped saturable absorber for fast switching between continuous-wave and passively mode-locked regimes of a Nd:YVO4 laser.

We report on the fast (approximately 50 micros) remote-controlled switching between continuous-wave (cw), cw mode-locked (ML) and Q-switched ML modes of operation of a Nd:YVO(4) laser using an optically-pumped saturable absorber (SA). Pulses as short as 40 ps with an average output power of 0.5 W are obtained in cw ML regime.