Room-temperature, continuous-wave, 946-nm Nd:YAG laser pumped by laser-diode arrays and intracavity frequency doubling to 473 nm

We report the use of GaAlAs laser-diode arrays to pump a cw Nd:YAG laser operating on the 946-nm (4)F(3/2) ? (4)I(9/2) transition. At room temperature, the lasing threshold was reached with 58 mW of absorbed pump power, and, with 175 mW of absorbed pump power, 42 mW of output power at 946 nm was obtained in a TEM(00) mode by using 0.7% output coupling. In addition, pumping with an infrared dye laser operating in a pure TEM(00) mode was used to investigate the effects of reabsorption loss that are characteristic of the 946-nm laser transition. LiIO(3) was used as an intracavity doubling crystal, and 100 microW of blue light was generated by using diode-laser pumping in a nonoptimized cavity.