Design and characterization of a diode pumped, single longitudinal and transverse mode, intracavity doubled cw Nd:YAG laser

We report on the experimental results of a diode-pumped, intracavity-doubled cw Nd:YAG laser, pumped by a 10-W fiber-coupled semiconductor laser at 808 nm and emitting as much as 600 mW in a stable single longitudinal mode and TEM00 spatial mode. We discuss the main issues of the resonator design and the optimization of the intracavity second harmonic conversion by interpreting our results using simple models. Improvements for the current project are also discussed.