Abstract
Passive optical locking of an 865-nm diode laser to a standing wave, external resonator containing potassium niobate has resulted in efficient harmonic generation at 432 nm.1 Our most recent experiments have yielded 1.5 mW of unidirectional blue output (3.0 mW total) at an input power level of 15 mW. The measured intracavity infrared buildup factor of >100 in these experiments indicated that total absorption and scattering losses within the resonator were below 1% and that >90% of the incident power was matched into the fundamental mode of the resonator. As demonstrated by Kozlovsky,2 further improvements in unidirectional conversion efficiency are possible by using a traveling wave ring cavity in place of a standing wave resonator. The use of a ring cavity also eliminates the need for optical isolation between the external cavity and the source laser. In this paper we describe a SLEDD laser in which a ring resonator is used to build fundamental power. Passive locking is accomplished by imaging the cavity throughput back onto the diode laser.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
GEORGE J. DIXON, CARL E. WIEMAN, and CAROL E. TANNER
THM6 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1989
THOMAS M. BAER, MARK S. KEIRSTEAD, and DAVID F. WELCH
THM5 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1989
A. KEMMERICH, C. ZIMMERMAN, T. W. HANSCH, and D. H. McINTYRE
CME1 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1990