Abstract

Pump-resonant excitation, in which a weakly absorbing gain medium is placed inside an optical cavity that is resonant at both the pump and laser wavelengths, is shown to reduce significantly the losses due to saturable absorption in a quasi-three-level, diode-pumped laser. Initial experiments, in which this technique is applied to the 946-nm Nd:YAG laser, have yielded incident threshold power levels below 1.3 mW and optical slope efficiencies exceeding 25%.

© 1991 Optical Society of America

Room-temperature diode-bar-pumped Nd:YAG laser at 946 nm

W. A. Clarkson, R. Koch, and D. C. Hanna
Opt. Lett. 21(10) 737-739 (1996)

Nd:YAG laser pumped at 946 nm

Sharone Goldring and Raphael Lavi
Opt. Lett. 33(7) 669-671 (2008)

Continuous-wave, 15.2 W diode-end-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating at 946 nm

Rui Zhou, Enbang Li, Haifeng Li, Peng Wang, and Jianquan Yao
Opt. Lett. 31(12) 1869-1871 (2006)

Injection locking of a diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser at 946 nm

G. Hollemann, E. Peik, A. Rusch, and H. Walther
Opt. Lett. 20(18) 1871-1873 (1995)

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)