Single-longitudinal-mode cascaded crystalline Raman laser at 1.7 µm.

ABSTRACT

A single-longitudinal-mode crystalline Raman laser in the 1.7 µm wave band was reported for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The YVO4 Raman laser, which was intracavity-pumped by an actively Q-switched 1314 nm NdYLF laser, demonstrated the cascaded Stokes oscillation at 1715 nm. By inserting an etalon in the fundamental resonator, linewidth narrowing and power scaling of the second-Stokes laser were realized based on the spatial-hole-burning-free Raman gain. With an optimal pulse repetition frequency of 4 kHz, the maximum single-longitudinal-mode average output power of 1.8 W was acquired with the spectrum linewidth of ∼340MHz. Further increasing the incident pump power, the second-Stokes laser transitioned to multimode regime, and the maximum average output power reached 2.7 W with the peak power as high as ∼380kW.