Abstract

Intracavity-doubled solid-state lasers have been known for many years as an efficient visible laser. Using diode laser as the pumping source, compact and reliable picosecond visible light becomes possible. Many works have been done on using YAG as the host material. It was observed that these lasers were much less stable with the nonlinear crystal in the cavity than they were without it.¹ The instability is primarily contributed from the modal competition of longitudinal modes. Due to low thermal lensing and negligible thermal birefringence of YLF crystal, CW operation of intracavity-doubled Nd:YLF lasers were developed to solve the stability problem of YAG lasers.^2,3 In this paper, both CW and mode-locked operations of an intracavity-doubled diode-laser-pumped Nd:YLF laser was demonstrated. The stability criterion of the green laser output is also analyzed.

© 1995 IEEE