Abstract

Sources of the blue laser light are needed for many applications such as data storage, laser printing, and optical spectroscopy. It is, therefore, important to develop compact and reliable laser systems for the blue light generation. We demonstrate that coherent blue radiation can be generated in potassium titanyl phosphate (KIP) crystals by tripling the 1.319- and 1.338-μm fundamental lines from a Nd:YAG laser via sum frequency generation (SFG) with their second harmonics (see Fig. 1). A type I LiNbO₃ crystal was used for the second harmonic generator with 25% conversion efficiency. The third harmonics were then generated by mixing the second harmonics with the residual fundamental under type II phase matching configurations. About 8% of the fundamental energy was converted to the third harmonic in our nonoptimized SFG scheme.

© 1990 Optical Society of America