Judith M. DAWES, Peter DEKKER, Phillip BURNS and James A. PIPER

Centre for Lasers and Applications, Department of Physics, Macquarie University, Balaclava Rd, Sydney 2109, Australia

(Received October 1, 2004; Accepted December 9, 2004)

Ytterbium-doped self-frequency-doubling lasers offer high efficiency, tunable, visible and near-infrared, cw and pulsed operation from compact devices. We review the performance of ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminium borate (Yb:YAB) self-frequency-doubling lasers. Because of the detailed dynamics of the interaction of the nonlinear pulse shaping process for mode-locking or for Q-switching self-frequency-doubled lasers, we observe pulse lengthening in each process when frequency doubling is optimised, with high average output power. However, for continuous wave operation, the self-frequency doubling process may be optimised to give highly efficient, robust, widely-tunable output in the visible as well as fundamental output in the infrared.

Key words: novel lasers, frequency conversion, ytterbium lasers, diode-pumped solid-state lasers, visible lasers, infrared lasers