A Solid State Raman Laser for Sodium D2 Line Resonant Excitation

A reliable, cost-effective sodium resonance source is needed for mesospheric sodium excitation in adaptive optics applications [1-2]. Previous approaches include a dye laser pumped by a green source and systems with nonlinear frequency conversion [3,4]. This paper presents a new, all solid-state source [5], which can be scaled to over 100 W in average power at 589 nm. In this approach, a 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser pumps a CaWO4Raman laser with an intra-cavity doubler (Fig. 1). Alignment of the frequency conversion system is relatively simple because the Raman process requires no phase matching, and the doubling crystal is non-critically phase matched LBO.