Experimental investigation on the Y-type cavity tunable dual-wavelength laser based on neodymium-doped vanadate crystals

Abstract The Y-type cavity tunable dual-wavelength laser (DWL) based on the Nd:GdVO4 and Nd:YVO4 crystals is demonstrated. The DWL consists of two end-pumped structures being joined by a polarizer and sharing one same output coupler. The two end-pumped structures generate the DWL beams at 1063 nm and 1064 nm with orthogonal polarizations, as well the two optical cavity lengths are 33 and 26 mm, respectively. The output powers of 1063 nm and 1064 nm laser linearly increase with the incident pump powers increasing, reach 598.73 mW and 601.04 mW with the corresponding slope efficiencies at 18.9% and 13.1%, where the incident pump powers are 7.11 and 6.86 W, respectively. The long term stability of output powers are measured less than 2.0% in 2 h. By independently adjusting the incident pump powers, the frequency separation of the DWL is tuned from 259.60 to 373.50 GHz, with the output power ratio from 0.08 to 13.77. Such a stable, tunable DWL is potential for optical terahertz waves generation.