Discretely Tunable Multiwavelength Visible Laser Based on Cascaded Frequency Conversion Processes

Abstract

We demonstrate a discretely tunable multiwavelength visible laser through second harmonic generation (SHG) and sum frequency generation (SFG) of multiorder Stokes lasers generated from an external Raman laser oscillator. The Raman laser oscillator, driven by a 1064 nm laser with an energy of 120 mJ, is based on a cascade of Ba(NO3)2 and two axial orthogonal KGd(WO4)2 crystals. Through adjusting the angle of the SHG/SFG crystal, we obtain 16 visible wavelengths with a wide range from 579.5–658.4 nm. In addition, we investigate the output energy and conversion efficiency of the resulting laser with various phase-matching angles. We show that the maximum energy of the visible laser is 8.87 mJ with five wavelengths, and the corresponding total conversion efficiency is 7.4%. These experimental results demonstrate a practical and effective method of generating a discretely tunable multiwavelength visible laser.