Abstract

There has recently been much interest in the production of blue and blue/green laser radiation from compact diode-pumped solid-state lasers for, amongst others, applications in the fields of optical data storage, undersea communications, and laser displays. Sum-frequency generation between the pump and intracavity field of a diode-pumped neodymium laser is one of several techniques that has been used to generate wavelengths in this spectral region.^1,2 This technique was initially considered quite attractive for several reasons. First, modulation rates in excess of 1 GHz are possible with direct diode modulation. Second, limited tunability is possible by tuning the wavelength of the pump diode. Finally, the 1064/810-nm sum-frequency laser is based on commonly available gain and nonlinear optical crystals (Nd:YAG and KTP). Unfortunately, the conversion efficiency of this class of device is significantly lower than that possible with other techniques.

© 1991 Optical Society of America