Diode side pumped, quasi-CW Nd:YVO₄ self-Raman laser operating at 1176 nm

In this work we demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, quasi-continuous wave (qcw) laser operation of a diode-side-pumped Nd:YVO₄ self-Raman laser operating at 1176 nm. The double beam mode controlling (DBMC) technique used in this work allows fundamental mode laser oscillation, resulting in a beam quality M² of 2.42 and 2.18 in the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. More than 3.5 W of peak output power at 1176 nm was achieved with TEM₀₀ laser mode, corresponding to an optical conversion efficiency of 5.4%.With multimode operation, more than 8W of peak output power was achieved, corresponding to 11.7% optical conversion efficiency.6 page(s