Production of high-power CWUV by resonant frequency quadrupling of a Nd:YLF laser

We have constructed a single ring to resonantly double an 18 watt Nd:YLF mode-locked laser and re-double the stored green to produce over 4 watts of power in the ultra-violet (UV). This laser is used to produce a beam of 470 MeV gamma-rays by Compton backscattering the laser beam from 2.8 GeV electrons stored in a synchrotron. Achieving high luminosity of the colliding beams requires very good mode quality and beam stability at the intersection point 22 meters from the laser. The ring consists of six mirrors, with two 25 cm radius of curvature mirrors enclosing each nonlinear crystal. The drive laser is a lamp-pumped Nd:YLF with a 50 ps bunch length at 76 MHz. A pointing stabilizer servo has been constructed as part of the infrared (IR) mode matching telescope. The IR to green conversion is accomplished in a 15 mm long non-critically phased matched LBO crystal located at a 40 micron waist, with an IR conversion efficiency of 70%. A stable, nearly diffraction limited UV beam of up to 4.2 watts is generated in a BBO crystal in the green storage ring. The output power is relatively independent of the efficiency of the LBO and BBO crystals. This fact makes it possible to reduce the amount of non-TEM, modes created by walk-off of the UV by using relatively thin BBO crystals. At present, however, the lower bound on the BBO thickness is limited by the loss of conversion efficiency at high power.