Efficient CW laser at 559 nm by intracavity sum-frequency mixing in a self-Raman Nd:YVO4 laser under direct 880 nm diode laser pumping

Abstract

We report an efficient continuous wave (CW) laser emission at 559 nm by sum-frequency mixing of the fundamental and first-Stokes fields generated within an Nd:YVO4 self-Raman laser. Intracavity sum-frequency mixing with LiB3O5 (LBO) nonlinear crystal yielded 890 mW of visible yellow-green emission, corresponding to an optical conversion efficiency of 4.9% with respect to the incident pump power; the output power stability over 4 h is better than 5.7%. The laser beam quality M2 factors are 3.65 and 4.13 in both horizontal and vertical dimensions respectively.