Abstract

In the recent years the interest has been focused on development of miniature all-solid-state self-Raman lasers in which one neodymium-doped crystal serves both as laser- and Raman-active medium [1-4]. More often the Q-switched self-Raman laser generation of fundamental radiation (1.06 µm) and the 1^st Stokes Raman component (1.17 µm) was demonstrated. Using the output coupler having lower reflectivity for the Stokes component than for the fundamental radiation leads to the 1^st Stokes output pulse duration decrease. Pulse duration in the range 500 ps to 1 ns (up to 6 times lower than the fundamental pulse duration) due to an effect of nonlinear cavity dumping was observed [1-3]. The 2^nd Stokes self-Raman laser generation [4] was earlier realized via cascade-like stimulated Raman scattering but without nonlinear cavity dumping because of using the output coupler with the same high reflectivity for all radiation components. However a high-order Stokes generation has a potential for stronger nonlinear cavity dumping and pulse shortening because of higher nonlinearity of the process and possibility of parametric four-wave mixing of the Raman-laser radiation components.

© 2015 IEEE