High-power single-frequency continuous 589 nm diamond sodium guide laser

Crystalline Raman lasers based on diamond, due to its properties of high Raman gain, high thermal conductivity and spatial hole burning free, have gradually become a main technology to address high-power single-frequency lasers. A continuous wave single frequency 589 nm laser with the highest power of 16.5 W, the spectral linewidth of 16 MHz, the beam quality of M2=1.05 and the light-to-light conversion efficiency of 20%, was developed in a diamond Raman resonator with intracavity frequency doubling. This 589 nm diamond Raman laser was pumped by using an ytterbium-doped fiber laser at 1018 nm and was designed for the application of sodium guide star laser in astronomical observations and other research fields. A theoretical calculation based on external Raman resonance and intracavity frequency doubling was modeled to analyze the influence of the resonator output coupling at the Stokes and the temperature phase-matching of the frequency doubling crystal on the output power.