Letter
9 / 1 May 2021 / Optics Letters 2063
Powerful Q-switched Raman laser at 589 nm with
a repetition rate between 200 and 500 kHz
J. Q. Hsiao,1,2 Yu Jung Huang,1,2 C. C. Lee,1,2 Y. T. Yu,1,2 C. H. Tsou,1,2 H. C. Liang,2,3
Y. F. Chen1,2, *
1
Department of Electrophysics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, 1001 Ta-Hsueh Rd., Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
2
LIGHTMED Laser System Research Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
3
Institute of Optoelectronic Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan
*Corresponding author: yfchen@cc.nctu.edu.tw
Received 23 February 2021; accepted 29 March 2021; posted 30 March 2021 (Doc. ID 423371); published 20 April 2021
We demonstrate a highly powerful acousto-optically Q-
switched Nd:YVO4 yellow laser at 589 nm by using a N p -cut
KGW crystal and a phase-matching lithium triborate crystal
to performance the intracavity stimulated Raman scat-
tering and second-harmonic generation, respectively. We
experimentally verify that the design of the separate cavity
is superior to the conventional design of the shared cavity.
By using the separate cavity, the optical-to-optical effi-
ciency can be generally higher than 32% for the repetition
rate within 200–500 kHz. The maximum output power
at 589 nm can be up to 15.1 W at an incident pump power
of 40 W and a repetition rate of 400 kHz. © 2021 Optical
Society of America
https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.423371
Yellow pulsed lasers near the spectral range of 589 nm are
extremely useful in a variety of scientific and practical applica-
tions, such as biomedicine [1], atmospheric lidar measurements
[2], adaptive optics [3], and sodium guide stars [4,5]. The tech-
nologies for developing yellow light sources at 589 nm involve
dye lasers, diode-pumped solid-state lasers, optically pumped
semiconductor lasers, and fiber lasers [6]. The intracavity stimu-
lated Raman scattering (SRS) of Nd-doped crystal lasers with
the second-harmonic generation (SHG) is currently the most
efficient approach for generating yellow light in solid-state
lasers [7–15]. In 2009, Zhu et al. used an intracavity SHG of
an a-cut Nd:YVO4 self-Raman laser to produce a 7.9 W yel-
low laser at 588 nm with a pulse rate of 110 kHz [16]. Then
Duan et al. in 2011 employed an intracavity SHG of a c -cut
Nd : YVO4 self-Raman laser to obtain 2.15 W yellow emission
at 589 nm with a pulse rate of 40 kHz [17]. Shen et al. in 2013
utilized an intracavity SHG of Nd:YAG/KLW Raman laser to
generate 4.13 W yellow laser at 589 nm with a repetition rate
of 10 kHz [18]. Liu et al. in 2016 used an intracavity SHG of
Nd : GGG/BaWO4 Raman laser to obtain a quasi-continuous-
wave 589 nm laser with output power of 4.2 W at a micro-pulse
rate of 33.3 kHz [19]. For high-speed scanning, Q-switched
lasers with repetition rate f r higher than 100 kHz are of great
demand [20,21]. Recently, we achieved a high-power 8.8 W
yellow laser at 588 nm with a repetition rate of 200 kHz by
means of optimizing the gate-open time [22].
0146-9592/21/092063-04 Journal © 2021 Optical Society of America
Vol. 46, No.
AND
In this Letter, we develop a highly efficient diode-pumped
acousto-optically (AO) Q-switched Nd:YVO4 Raman laser at
589 nm with a potassium gadolinium tungstate (KGW) to pro-
duce the intracavity SRS at the shift of 901 cm−1 . We discover
that the design of the separate cavity can enhance the conversion
efficiency to be more than two times for the repetition rate
within 200–500 kHz, in comparison with the conventional
design of the shared cavity. At a repetition rate of 400 kHz, the
maximum output power at 589 nm can reach 15.1 W at an
incident pump power of 40 W, corresponding to a conversion
efficiency of 37.8%.
Figures 1(a) and 1(b) show the experimental configurations
of the shared and separate cavities, respectively, for generating
the yellow laser at 589 nm in an AO Q-switched Nd:YVO4 laser
with intracavity SRS and SHG. A 40 W fiber-coupled 808 nm
laser diode was used as the pump source. The core radius and
numerical aperture of the fiber specification were 100 µm and
0.22, respectively. A pair of coupling lenses was utilized to focus
the pump light into the laser crystal with a radius of approximate
200 µm. The laser crystal was an a -cut Nd:YVO4 crystal with a
Nd3+ concentration of 0.35 at.% and a size of 3 × 3 × 10 mm3 .
The pumped side of the Nd:YVO4 crystal was coated to be
highly reflective (HR) within 1000–1200 nm (R > 99.9%)
and highly transmissive (HT) at 808 nm (T > 95%) to act as
the rear mirror of the cavity. The other side of the laser gain
medium was coated to be anti-reflective (AR) in the region of
1060–1180 nm (R < 0.2%). All the coating layers were accom-
plished by using the electron-beam deposition. The Q-switched
device was an AO modulator (Gooch & Housego Co.) driven
by a 40.68 MHz radio-frequency generator operated at 20 W
power. The AO modulator had a length of 30 mm and was
coated to be AR at 1064 nm on both ends. The Raman medium
was a Np -cut KGW crystal with a size of 3 × 3 × 25 mm3 .
The polarization of the fundamental wave was placed along
the Nm axis of the KGW crystal for favoring the Raman shift
of 901 cm−1 to generate the Stokes wave at 1178 nm. For the
configuration of the shared cavity, the facet of the KGW crystal
toward the Nd:YVO4 crystal was coated to be AR in the region
of 1060–1180 nm (R < 0.2%). For the design of the separate
cavity, the facet of the KGW crystal toward the Nd:YVO4 crys-
tal was coated to be HR at 1178 nm (R > 99.9%) and HT at
 2064 Vol. 46, No. 9 / 1 May 2021 / Optics Letters
Fig. 1. Experimental configurations of the (a) shared and (b) sep-
arate cavities for generating the yellow laser at 589 nm in an AO
Q-switched Nd:YVO4 laser with intracavity SRS and SHG.
1064 nm (T > 99%). For both kinds of cavity, the other facet of
the KGW crystal was coated to be HT (T > 99%) at 1064 and
1178 nm and HR at 589 nm (R > 99%) to reflect the yellow
light generated in the backward direction, as shown in Fig. 1.
The Nd:YVO4 and KGW crystals were wrapped with indium
foils and then mounted in the copper holders actively cooled at
20◦ C. A 12 mm lithium triborate (LBO) crystal with the cut
angle of θ = 90◦ and ϕ = 3.9◦ for the critical phase matching
was used to produce the yellow laser at 589 nm via the intracav-
ity SHG of the Stokes wave at 1178 nm. Both end facets of the
LBO crystal were coated to be AR at 1064, 1178, and 589 nm.
A thermoelectric cooler was employed to precisely control the
temperature of the LBO crystal. A concave mirror with a radius
of curvature of 100 mm was utilized as the output coupler.
The concave side of the output coupler was coated to be HR at
1060–1180 nm (R > 99.9%) and HT at 589 nm (T > 95%).
The other side was coated to be AR at 589 nm (R < 0.2%).
The overall cavity lengths for both designs were approximately
90 mm.
The value of the gate-open time of the AO modulator has
been found to be important in optimizing the Q-switched laser
for the repetition rate greater than 100 kHz [22]. Based on
thoroughly experimental explorations, the optimal gate-open
time was confirmed to be approximately 0.5 µs for the repetition
rate within 200–500 kHz. Accordingly, the gate-open time was
fixed at 0.5 µs for all experimental data presented in this Letter.
Figure 2 shows the average output power versus the incident
pump power for the repetition rates of 100, 200, 300, and
400 kHz in the shared cavity. The pump power for the lasing
threshold is approximately 10, 12.8, 18.5, and 23 W for the
repetition rates of 100, 200, 300, and 400 kHz, respectively.
The maximum pump power for the stable output at the pulse
rate of 100 kHz is approximately 28 W, which is lower than the
value of 33 W for the rate between 200 and 400 kHz. The reason
for the inferior performance at 100 kHz is that the effect of
energy-transfer upconversion (ETU) significantly increases the
fractional thermal loading with decreasing the pulse rate [23].
Consequently, the performance of the laser system was explored
at the pulse rate higher than 200 kHz. Since the thermal loading
Letter
5 100 kHz
Average output power (W)
200 kHz
300 kHz
4 400 KHz
0
0 10 20 30
Incident pump po
ower (W)
Fig. 2. Average output power versus incident pump power for the
repetition rates of 100, 200, 300, and 400 kHz in the shared cavity.
Fig. 3. Oscilloscope traces for repetition rates at 200–400 kHz in
the shared cavity. Left, time span for revealing pulse train; right, time
span for displaying pulse duration.
in the laser crystal significantly increases under a non-lasing
condition, as compared with a lasing condition [23], reducing
the lasing threshold is the critical issue for scaling up the out-
put power. Furthermore, when the laser cavity is operated at a
repetition rate of 500 kHz, the output pulse train is unstable.
The duration and stability of the Q-switched pulses were
measured with a high-speed Si photodetector (Electro-optics
Technology Inc. ET-2030 with rise time of 300 ps) and a digital
oscilloscope (Teledyne LeCroy, Wave Master 820Zi-A) with a
20 GHz electrical bandwidth and the sampling rates of 25 ps.
Figure 3 shows the experimental data for the pulse train and
duration at repetition rates of 200, 300, and 400 kHz at a pump
power of 30 W. The peak-to-peak instability of pulse amplitude
is estimated to be approximately ±7%, ±11%, ±15% for the
repetition rates of 200, 300, and 400 kHz, respectively. On the
other hand, the pulse duration is approximately 16.2, 22.3,
and 37 ns for the repetition rates of 200, 300, and 400 kHz,
respectively. The pulse duration is inversely proportional to the
initial inversion Ni . Under the circumstance of t p  τ f , the
initial inversion Ni is linearly proportional to the pump time of
each cycle t p = 1/ f , where τ f is the lifetime of the upper level.
Consequently, the relationship between pulse duration and
repetition rate f can be found to be linearly proportional.
Figure 4 shows the average output power versus the incident
pump power for the repetition rates of 200, 300, 400, and
500 kHz in the separate cavity. The pump power for the lasing
 Letter
16
14 200 kHz
Average output power (W)
300 kHz
12
400 kHz
10 500 kHz
8 1/2
6 wS =
4
2 From calculation, w S = 127 µm. Since the mode size w S
0
0 10 20
0 30
Incident pump power (W)
Fig. 4. Average output power versus incident pump power for the
repetition rates of 200, 300, 400, and 500 kHz in the separate cavity.
threshold can be seen to be approximately 10.5, 13, 18, and
22 W, for the repetition rates of 200, 300, 400, and 500 kHz,
respectively. In general, the output power can exceed 13 W at
a pump power of 40 W for the repetition rate between 200–
500 kHz. The conversion efficiency is superior to the results
shown in Fig. 2 for the shared cavity. The superior performance
of the separate cavity partly originates from the advantage that
the Stokes wave does not propagate through the laser crystal. As
compared with the performance obtained with the shared cavity
shown in Fig. 2, the lasing threshold is significantly reduced.
Since the previous reported lasers near 589 nm by using the self-
Raman scheme [16,17] had to be constructed with the shared
cavity, the separate cavity in this Letter can be seen to lead to a
considerable progress in the conversion efficiency.
The pump threshold needed to reach the intracavity SRS is
given by [23,24]
A λ F (TF + γ F )(TS + γ S )
Pth =
g R L R λ P 2 (1 − e −t p /τ f )
where A is the effective the effective interaction area of the fun-
damental and Stokes waves, g R is the gain coefficient of SRS, L R
is the length of the Raman medium, λ P is the pump wavelength,
λ F is the fundamental wavelength, TF (TS ) is the transmittance
of the cavity mirror at the fundamental (Stokes) wavelength, and
γ F (γ S ) are the round-trip losses for the fundamental (Stokes)
field. From Eq. (1), the threshold pump power can be seen to
be linearly proportional to the effective interaction area A.
Using the overlap integral, the effective interaction area can be
expressed as A = π(w2F + w 2S )/2, where w F and w S are the
mode sizes of the fundamental and Stokes waves in the Raman
crystal, respectively. For the shared cavity shown in Fig. 1(a), w F
is given by [25]
( " #)1/2
λF p ∗ (L ∗F − L ∗S )2
wF = L F (R C − L F ) + p ∗
∗
, pulse amplitude can be found to be generally better than ±5%
π L F (R C − L ∗F )
(2)
P4
where L F = L F − k=1 [1 − (1/n k )]L k ,
∗ ∗
LS = LS −
P2
k=1 [1 − (1/n k )]L k , L F is the geometrical length of the
fundamental cavity, L S is the geometrical length of the Stokes
cavity, R C is the radius of curvature of the output coupler, and
n k and L k with k = 1, 2, 3, 4 are the refractive indices and the
lengths of the LBO, KGW, Q-switched, and Nd:YVO4 crystals,
respectively. Due to the complete overlap, the mode size √ w S for
the shared cavity can be directly expressed as w S = w F λ S /λ F .
Using the experimental parameters of L ∗F = 60 mm and
Vol. 46, No. 9 / 1 May 2021 / Optics Letters 2065
L ∗S = 25 mm, it can be calculated that w F = 158 µm and
w S = 167 µm. In the separate cavity, the value of w F is the same
as that in the shared cavity. On the other hand, the mode size w S
for the separate cavity is given by [25]
λS
 q
L S (R C − L S )
∗ ∗
. (3)
π
for the separate cavity is considerably smaller than that for the
40 shared cavity, the pump threshold is significantly reduced. Note
that the ratio w S /w F should be larger than 0.7 to maintain the
overlap efficiency. Substituting the experimental parameters of
g R = 3.3 cm/GW, TF ≈ TS = 0.2%, γ F ≈ γ S = 0.1%, w F ,
and w S into Eq. (1), the SRS thresholds for the repetition rates
of 200, 300, and 400 kHz in the shared cavity are 12.0, 18.0,
and 23.8 W, respectively. For the separate cavity, the calculated
SRS thresholds are 9.3, 13.9, 18.5, and 23.2 W for the repetition
rates of 200, 300, 400, and 500 kHz, respectively. The numeri-
cal results can be found to agree well with the experimental data.
Furthermore, the smaller the mode size w S , the higher the SRS
conversion efficiency. Consequently, the overall efficiency with
the separate cavity is considerably higher than that with the
shared cavity. By measuring the divergence angle and near-field
mode size, the beam quality factor M2 was determined for dif-
ferent output powers. The M2 value was approximately 1.5 from
threshold to increase gradually to 2.5 at maximum power. The
Gaussian-like beam quality indicates that the thermal lensing
did not cause serious astigmatism [26].
In addition to the pump threshold, the other factor related to
the power scale-up is the thermal loading. The thermal loading
in the laser crystal can be given by Pload = ξ Pin , where Pin is the
incident pump power, and ξ is the fractional thermal loading.
, (1) The effective thermal lens of the laser crystal can be expressed as
f th = C /Pload , where C is a parameter related to the pump area.
For the shared cavity, the condition for a stable operation for the
fundamental wave is given by f th ≥ L ∗F . Since the Stokes wave
completely overlaps with the fundamental wave, the stable con-
dition is the same as f th ≥ L ∗F . For the separate cavity, however,
the stable condition for the Stokes wave becomes f th,R ≥ L ∗S ,
where f th,R is the effective thermal lens of the Raman crystal.
Since the thermal loading in the Raman crystal is smaller than
that in the laser crystal and L ∗S < L ∗F , the stable range for the
separate cavity is considerably wider than that for the shared
cavity.
Figure 5 shows the experimental data for the pulse train and
duration at repetition rates of 200, 300, 400, and 500 kHz at
a pump power of 40 W. The pulse duration is approximately
7.0, 9.3, 10.2, and 13.8 ns for the repetition rates of 200, 300,
400, and 500 kHz, respectively. The peak-to-peak instability of
for the repetition rate within 200–500 kHz. Comparing with
the results obtained with the shared cavity, the overall stability
of the pulse train is significantly improved. For comparing with
the results shown in Fig. 3, the pulse duration at a pump power
of 30 W was found to be approximately 13, 17, and 21 ns for
the repetition rates of 200, 300, and 400 kHz, respectively. Due
to a shorter cavity length, the pulse duration is shorter than the
result obtained with the shared cavity. The lasing spectrum was
measured by an optical spectrum analyzer (Advantest Q8381A).
Figure 6 shows the measured spectrum of yellow emission at
a pump power of 40 W and a repetition rate of 400 kHz. The
 2066 Vol. 46, No. 9 / 1 May 2021 / Optics Letters
Fig. 5. Oscilloscope traces for repetition rates at 200–500 kHz in
the separate cavity. Left, time span for revealing pulse train; right, time
span for displaying pulse duration.
1.2
1.0
Intensity (arb. units)
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
586 587 588 589 590
Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 6. Lasing spectrum at pump power of 40 W and rate of
400 kHz.
central peak and width of the lasing spectrum can be seen to be
approximately 588.7 and 0.6 nm, respectively. The roughness
in the spectrum comes from the effect of multi-longitudinal
modes. With inserting an etalon into the cavity, the central peak
of the lasing spectrum is feasibly tunned to 589.0 ± 0.3 nm,
where the etalon is an uncoated glass with the thickness of
0.3 mm, and the position is between the AO device and the
KGW crystal. In the present cavity configuration, it is difficult
to achieve the operation of single-frequency Raman laser at
589 nm [27].
In summary, we have demonstrated a highly efficient Q-
switched yellow laser at 589 nm. The Stokes wave at 1178 nm
and the SHG at 589 nm were achieved by using a Np -cut KGW
crystal to produce the intracavity SRS at the shift of 901 cm−1
and by using a phase-matching LBO crystal to double the fre-
quency. The design of the separate cavity has been confirmed to
significantly upgrade the output power and the pulse repetition
rate in comparison with the conventional design of the shared
cavity. The output power at 589 nm can achieve 15.1 W at an
incident pump power of 40 W and a repetition rate of 400 kHz.
Letter
Funding. Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (109-2119-M-009-
015-MY3, 109-3111-9-009-001).
Disclosures. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data Availability. Data underlying the results presented in this paper are
not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon
reasonable request.
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