Abstract

During the past few years major advances have been made, both in performance and theoretical understanding, of frequency converters based on the Raman effect. The impetus for the effort has come largely from the NAVY/DARPA interest in advanced blue-green communication systems, but other applications such as isotope separation and remote sensing have contributed as well. The laser sources which act as pump sources for these converters are the recently developed excimer lasers, excited either by an e-beam or an electrical discharge. These lasers meet the requirements of high efficiency (1-10%), scalability to high average powers, and lifetime. Their UV wavelength, however, frequently does not meet the requirements of a given application, necessitating an additional frequency conversion step. The key requirements for this conversion are efficiency and, equally important, a near-diffraction-limited output beam.

© 1983 Optical Society of America