All-solid-state picosecond tunable source of near infrared radiation

A quasi-cw diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser, mode locked by a nonlinear mirror and stabilized by an acousto-optic modulator, has been developed that generates 31-ps, 23-µJ pulses. Employing this source with a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal in a traveling-wave geometry, we obtained extracavity frequency conversion with pump depletion of as much as 62% in the near infrared (1.46– 1.56 µm) with a pulse spectral width of 1.5nm and a beam quality M2=1.7.