High Power Blue-Green Laser Sources

In this Phase II SBIR program, we will construct a laser source that can be applied to the generation of blue-green laser radiation. Such sources are of great interest to the Navy for both anti-submarine warfare and communications at depth and speed, as blue-green light matches the minimum of seawater transmission for a variety of conditions. In addition, there are military applications in pumping Ti:Sapphire lasers for stable clocks as well as applications for bioinstrumentation, displays, and fundamental research. We propose to build a green-laser-pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO). The oscillator can be used in two modes of operation. In the first mode, a small fraction of the infrared radiation from the OPO will be fre-quency doubled, sent through an atomic vapor cell, and used to lock the infrared radiation in frequency facilitating its use as a high power source for injection seeding. In the second mode, a large fraction (~25%) of the infrared radiation will be converted to the blue. This will yield a tunable blue source that can find applications in detector characterization and basic research.