Nd:YVO₄ high-power master oscillator power amplifier laser system for second-generation gravitational wave detectors

Ultrastable high-power laser systems are essential components of the long baseline interferometers that detected the first gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron stars. One way to further increase the sensitivity of current generation gravitational wave detectors (GWDs) is to increase the laser power injected into the interferometers. In this Letter, we describe and characterize a 72 W and a 114 W linearly polarized, single-frequency laser system at a wavelength of 1064 nm, each based on single-pass Nd:YVO₄ power amplifiers. Both systems have low power and frequency noise and very high spatial purity with less than 10.7% and 2.9% higher order mode content, respectively. We demonstrate the simple integration of these amplifiers into the laser stabilization environment of operating GWDs and show stable low-noise operation of one of the amplifier systems in such an environment for more than 45 days.