Abstract

Potassium niobate (KNbO₃) is known for its high nonlinear coefficient which together with the increasing quality of crystals available makes it a very attractive candidate for frequency doubling into the blue. Previous work has demonstrated that frequency doubling in an external cavity is a good alternative to doubling within the laser cavity since it allows for independent optimization of the laser and doubling cavities. With reference to KNbO₃ in an external cavity, 40mW of blue output was obtained by doubling a diode laser,^[1] while 154mW was achieved by nonlinear mixing of diode and Nd:YAG emission.^[2]

© 1992 Optical Society of America