Moving solid state cyan lasers beyond 20 mW

Abstract

We report on cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation of 488 nm radiation in a 5 mm long periodically poled KTiOPO4 (PPKTP) crystal pumped by the output of a single-mode 976 nm semiconductor external cavity laser. At a pump laser output power of 660 mW, a mode-matching efficiency into an enhancement cavity of 65 % was observed. A maximum power of 156 mW at 488 nm was generated in the enhancement cavity of which 130 mW was coupled out. Under these pump laser conditions an overall optical conversion efficiency of 20 % and an overall electrical to optical efficiency of 9 % was measured. Both the spatial and spectral properties of the 488 nm beam are of very high quality. Typically, a near-diffraction-limited beam with M 2 <1.1 is produced with low astigmatism and little ellipticity.