Optics Communications 282 (2009) 263–266

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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

532 nm laser based on V-type doubly resonant intra-cavity frequency-doubling

Zhaoyu Ren *, Zhimeng Huang, Sen Jia, Yan Ge, Jintao Bai
Institute of Photonics and Photo-Technology, Northwest University Provincial Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic Technology, Northwest University, Xi’an 710069, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: LD side-pumped dual interconnected V-type quasi-continuous wave green laser has been demonstrated.
Received 18 May 2008 The two Nd:YAG modules were placed in a plane-concave V-type resonator and a plane-concave straight
Received in revised form 7 September 2008 cavity formed two stable operation beam of the 1064-nm fundamental frequency laser. Through acousto-
Accepted 9 September 2008
optic Q-switched and frequency doubling crystal, two double-frequency laser beams arrived at the folded
flat mirror, which were unidirectional output by the folded flat mirror at the end. As the pumped current
was 50 A, the 532 nm green laser maximum average output power of 206 W at a repetition of 22.4 kHz
PACS:
was achieved with a pulse width of 201 ns and the largest single pulse energy of 9.2 mJ, corresponding to
42.55.Rz
42.55.Xi
a peak power of 45.8 kW and a double frequency efficiency of 60.2%.
42.60.Gd Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
42.70.Hj

Keywords:
LD side-pumped
Intra-cavity frequency-doubling
532 nm laser

1. Introduction two laser beams in two independent resonators through specific

Laser diode pumped solid-state lasers with high power and
small size are stable and reliable. They are attractive for high en-
ergy conversion efficiency, frequency stability and good beam
quality. Many investigations in high-average-power diode side
pumped solid-state Nd:YAG lasers [1–5] have been carried out in
recent years. Konno [6] who used LBO crystal frequency doubling
and L-cavity semiconductor-pumped Nd:YAG laser to obtain the
output power of 138 W, corresponding to the beam quality factor
M2 = 11. Honea [7] reported double acousto-optic diode-pumped
Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers, which had the three-mirror folded cav-
ity structure of the green 140 W output. Chang [8] obtained an effi-
cient diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser with 451 W of CW IR and 182 W
of pulsed green output.
At present, there are two main ways to obtain a high average
power and high beam quality for Nd:YAG Q-switched green laser:
one is the two-rod system, and the other is an independent double-
cavity system. In the former design, the cavity length is signifi-
cantly increased, resulting in cavity detuning. When the funda-
mental frequency lasers go through a number of rods and form
oscillation, the loss is increased and the high photon density in
the cavity tempts the laser rods injury. The thermal birefringence
and thermal lens effect are very serious. In the latter method,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rzy@nwu.edu.cn (Z. Ren).
optical coupling components achieve convergence output. This
method is simple, but the addition of optical coupling components
will increase the loss.
In this paper, dual interconnected resonator with unidirectional
coupling output composed of V-cavity and straight cavity was
used. In the experiment, using two Nd:YAG module, KTP for in-
tra-cavity doubled frequency, Q-double in the pump current to
50 A at a repetition of 22.4 kHz, the maximum average power
206 W for the quasi-continuous green laser output is obtained.
This combination design helps to compensate the thermal lens ef-
fect and thermal birefringence, improving the output power and
obtained better beam quality at the same time.
2. Experimental setup
On the basis of straight cavity and V-cavity, a combination res-
onator is designed, which have the advantages of large mode vol-
ume, flexible adjustment of mode parameter for V-cavity and
compact structure, smaller loss for straight cavity. Intra-cavity
doubling technology that is used to reduce the threshold makes
it have a smaller waist, higher pumping efficiency, high power
and narrow pulse output. Fig. 1 is schematic drawing of the cavity
configuration of diode-laser.
In this figure, the laser crystal is LD side-pumped Nd:YAG and
the doubling crystal is KTP. M1 and Mr for the concave mirror are
plated 1064 and 532 nm high reflection film. M2 with 0° angle is

0030-4018/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.optcom.2008.09.033
264 Z. Ren et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 263–266

the 532 nm plane output mirror. M3 is a double-coating output

mirror for 532 nm. M4 is a harmonic mirror. M1 and M3 compose
the cavity mirrors for V optical resonator, which provide the oscil-
lation of basic frequency waves and coupling output of doubled
frequency laser. M2 is used to adjust the incident angle and spot
size of basic frequency waves on the frequency-doubling crystal,
while provides coupling output of doubled frequency laser. M3
and M1 compose the optical resonant cavity mirrors for straight
cavity, which make the basic frequency waves oscillate in the res-
onator. The doubled frequency laser of straight cavity and V-cavity
produces coupling output through mirror M2.
Intra-cavity-mode SHG gives greater power-conversion effi-
ciency than external mode if the insertion losses of the non-linear
crystal for the fundamental resonator can be kept low. In the V-
cavity, in order to obtain high output, it was necessary to couple
out the second harmonic with low additional losses. As the second
Fig. 2. Variation of thermal focal length with the pumping current.
harmonic is generated in both directions, this was most conve-
niently done in a three-mirror folded cavity ( Fig. 1) using spe-
cially-coated mirrors. All the mirrors (M1, M2, M3) were highly
reflecting at 1064 nm. M2 and M3 were output mirrors for As shown in Fig. 2, pump current was inversely proportional to
532 nm. To obtain the maximum efficiency, the fundamental reso- the thermal focal length. With the increase of the pump current,
nator should form a beam waist in the non-linear crystal [9]. the thermal focal length gradually decreased and the thermal lens
If pumping in Nd:YAG was uniform, the temperature distribu- effect intensified, resulting in the resonator parameters’ change,
tion in laser rods would meet the equation which seriously impacted on the stability of resonator.
2
V is standing wave cavity. If the folding mirror works in the off-
d T 1 dT Q axis position, it would introduce astigmatism. Astigmatism would
þ þ ¼0 ð1Þ
dr 2 r dr K cause the imbalance of the cavity spot size for the meridian plane
The solution for (1) is and arc arrow plane. It not only brings degrade of beam quality, but
also affects the stability of cavity, so how to control astigmatism
Q 2 gPin 2 2
TðrÞ ¼ Tðr0 Þ þ ðr  r 2 Þ ¼ Tðr0 Þ þ ðr  r Þ ð2Þ becomes the key to cavity design. Meanwhile, the laser crystal
4K 0 4K pr 20 l 0 thermal lens effect has great impact on the resonator stability
T(r0) is temperature in the surface of laser rods. It can be seen that and the output power [10], which is must considered in the design.
the temperature distribution of the bar is a parabola and the center Laser rods will be simplified as a focal length of f for the thin
temperature is the highest. The spatial distribution of refractive in- lens. A laser rod with the length of l0 considering the end of refrac-
dex for YAG rod is tion, its transformation matrix is
" #
dn n3 cosðbl0 Þ sinðbl0 Þ
nx;y ðXÞ ¼ n0 þ ðTðXÞ  Tðr0 ÞÞ  0 DB11;22 ð3Þ M¼ n0 b
ð5Þ
dT 2
n0 b sinðbl0 Þ cosðbl0 Þ
The laser crystal thermal focal length is no longer a fixed value, but
with the variations in the input power changes. The thermal focal In the matrix, b is lens category coefficient, n0 is the index along the
length is optical axis in the medium. The length of the general frequency
  crystals is very short, so the crystal can be simplified as a thin lens
KA 1 dn ar0 ðn0  1Þ
f ¼ þ aC r;/ n30 þ 1 ð4Þ with a focal length of f. Such a simplified equivalent cavity diagram
Pa 2 dT L of the linear plane-concave cavity is shown in Fig. 3.
where A is the cross-sectional area of laser rods, K is the Nd:YAG As the folding mirror M2 of the V-cavity is a flat green light out-
crystal thermal conductivity, a is the Nd:YAG crystal coefficient of put mirror with 0°, so for the 1064 nm fundamental frequency
thermal expansion, L is the total length of laser rods, r0 is the laser light, its equivalent cavity is the same as the equivalent cavity of
rod radius, n0 is the refractive index in the laser rods, Cr and C/ are the linear plane-concave resonator, so we only need to study any-
the function of Nd:YAG crystal elastic–optic coefficient, and Pa is the one of them. M1 is considered as a reference, so the one-way trans-
total power of the rods dissipation. fer matrix for the resonator from M1 to M3 is

   " #   
a b 1 d2 1 0 1 dm 1 d1
¼ M ð6Þ
c d 0 1  1f 1 0 1 0 1

Fig. 1. The experimental setup. Fig. 3. Linear plane-concave cavity equivalent light path.
 Z. Ren et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 263–266 265

The matrix for a circle is

" # " #" #" #" #
A B 1 0 d b 1 0 a b
¼ 2
ð7Þ
C D 0 1 c a R
1 c d
    
di 1 di dj dm 1
g i ¼ g i þ dm di 1   1  ð2dj þ dm Þ  ð8Þ
Ri f 2 Ri Ri f

d1 þ d2 þ dm
gi ¼ 1  ði; j ¼ 1; 2; i–jÞ ð9Þ
Ri
The resonator stability condition is

0 < g 1 g 2 < 1 ð10Þ

According to the resonator stability condition [11], using computer

numerical calculation, we select parameters with the actual circum- Fig. 4. 1064 nm and 532 nm output power at different pumping current of diode-
stances: R1 = 1m, M2 and M3 for the plane mirror, R1 = 1 m, folding laser.
arm length is 68 mm, the value for the folding angle of folding mir-
rors M2 and the short arm L3 (the distance from M2 to Nd:YAG) are:
he½0; 80 ; L3 e[20,80 mm]. In order to ensure higher frequency effi-
0.14
ciency, KTP between M2 and M3 should be as close as possible to
M3. The distance from KTP to M2 is about 60 mm. The KTP in 0.12
straight cavity is between the M3 and M4. The distance from it to

Normalized intensity
M4 is about 60 mm. The range of changes for the focal length of res- 0.10
onator thermal lens is 200–600 mm, thereby a low threshold cavity
0.08
is obtained and the thermal focal length changes with the pump
power fluctuations are insensitive. It achieves stable operation, 0.06
which is good for high power output.
The two same LD pumped components (made in Wuhan Sanpu 0.04
company of China), which were placed in the V-cavity and straight
0.02
cavity, were drove synchronously. Each component was composed
of thirty LD. The power of each LD was 20 W. In accordance with 0.00
the postponement equidistant, LD pumped Nd:YAG rod aside.
The amount of pump power was 1200 W, when the pump current - 0.02
was 55 A. To reduce the beam divergence angle, Nd:YAG laser rods - 6000 - 4000 - 2000 0 2000 4000 6000
about 4.0  85 mm with small diameter was used. HGTR KTP for Time (ns)
efficient type II critical phase matching at 1064 nm [12] (made in
RAICLO Crystals company of Israel) was put in the cavity as a dou- Fig. 5. 532 nm monocycle pulse waveform.

bling crystal, using the implementation of temperature control. In

the actively Q-switched laser, we used acousto-optic modulator
[13] which was located between mirror M1 (M1) and the Nd:YAG
laser rod. The dual-Q-module was Q-driven synchronous mode.
The center frequency was 22 kHz. Modulation frequency was
adjustable from 1 kHz to 100 kHz, thus high-quality and high-
power laser output was achieved.
3. Results and discussion
The cooling temperature in Nd:YAG and KTP was controlled at
22 °C. As adjusting pump current, the pump power was changed.
To make the two laser module Q-frequency synchronize, which
was 22.4 kHz, the curve of 1064 nm and 532 nm with pump cur-
rent and output power was described. In Fig. 4, when the current
of semiconductor pumping module for the two cavities was 50 A,
the resonator had been in saturation. At the same time, the largest
output power of 1064 nm was 342 W. The maximum average out-
put power of 532 nm green laser was 206 W and the pulse width
was 201 ns, corresponding to a peak power of 45.8 kW and the sin-
gle pulse energy was 9.2 mJ. Doubling efficiency was 60.2%.
Tektronix oscilloscope was used to measure the pulse width. In
the A-O Q-switched frequency of 22.4 kHz cases, the measurement
curve is in Fig. 5. The pulse width of 532 nm output was 201 ns. In
the output power of 206 W, using the United States Spiricon com-
pany’s LBA-200 spot tester, beam quality factor of Mx2 = 10.12,
My2 = 10.36 was measured.
The major advantages for this design were: (1) two laser crystal
rods were placed in two independent optical path to resolve seri-
ous thermal lens effect and thermal birefringence in dual-rod,
which reduced the injured risk of laser crystals for the high photon
density in the two-rod cavity. It was particularly fit for the situa-
tion where the laser rods were small and thermal lens effect was
obvious. (2) In order to achieve the unidirectional output for the
double frequency laser, a docking form of V-type cavity and
straight cavity was used. The straight cavity was put in an arm of
doubling frequency optical path for V-shaped cavity, which formed
overlap output for two green beam of 532 nm. Plane-concave
structure was used in two cavities, avoiding the extra insertion loss
of optical components for convergent overlapping beam. This pro-
gram improved the output power and obtained better beam qual-
ity at the same time. The flat green laser output mirror was placed
between two SHG, on both sides coated with 1064 nm high reflec-
tivity and 532 nm high transmittance two-color membrane, so that
the output mirror became cavity mirror of plane-concave V-cavity
and straight cavity. As far as possible to shorten the two cavity
length, as well as reduce the loss of fundamental and double fre-
quency lasers in output mirror. It increased conversion efficiency.
4. Conclusions
LD was used to side pump the dual Nd:YAG crystals. The two
modules were placed in a plane-concave V-type resonator and a
266 Z. Ren et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 263–266
plane-concave straight cavity and formed two stable operation
beam of the 1064-nm fundamental frequency laser. Through acou-
sto-optic Q-switched and frequency doubling crystal, two double-
frequency laser beams arrived at the folded flat mirror, which were
unidirectional output by the folded flat mirror at the end. The max-
imum average power 206 W for the quasi-continuous green laser
output is obtained. Laser performances stably and has high dou-
bling frequency efficiency. Therefore, LD side-pumped Nd:YAG in-
tra-cavity frequency doubled dual interconnected resonator
technology is a efficient method to obtain stable green laser with
high efficiency and power.
Acknowledgments
Support for this project by Shaanxi Province ‘‘13115” Technol-
ogy Innovation Engineering and Engineering Technology Research
Center under Grant 2007 ZDGC-18, by the Shaanxi Major Scientific
and Technological Research is acknowledged.
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