Abstract

I report the observation of continuous-wave laser oscillation in a Nd:YAG sphere. The spherical laser is excited by a dye laser that is focused to pump selectively certain regions of the sphere. With careful mode matching, single-frequency oscillation is obtained. The observed emission patterns agree well with the modes predicted by a classical treatment of a spherically symmetric resonator. These modes are described by products of spherical harmonics and Bessel functions, in contrast to the standard Gaussian-beam modes of a linear cavity.

© 1987 Optical Society of America

Continuous-wave operation of a room-temperature, diode-laser-pumped, 946-nm Nd:YAG laser

T. Y. Fan and Robert L. Byer
Opt. Lett. 12(10) 809-811 (1987)

Second-harmonic generation of a continuous-wave diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser using an externally resonant cavity

W. J. Kozlovsky, C. D. Nabors, and R. L. Byer
Opt. Lett. 12(12) 1014-1016 (1987)

Room-temperature, continuous-wave, 946-nm Nd:YAG laser pumped by laser-diode arrays and intracavity frequency doubling to 473 nm

W. P. Risk and W. Lenth
Opt. Lett. 12(12) 993-995 (1987)

Continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator pumped by a single-frequency resonantly doubled Nd:YAG laser

S. T. Yang, R. C. Eckardt, and R. L. Byer
Opt. Lett. 18(12) 971-973 (1993)

Continuous-wave Raman oscillation for a Nd³⁺:YAG intracavity fiber laser

Masataka Nakazawa, Masamitsu Tokuda, and Naoya Uchida
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 1(1) 86-90 (1984)