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-microJ 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 microm) with a pulse spectral width of 1.5nm and a beam quality M(2)=1.7.