Realization of a 50-watt facility-class sodium guidestar pump laser

A CW Na guidestar excitation source has been constructed and installed on the 3.5-m telescope at the Starfire Optical Range. This device is comprised of injection-locked Nd:YAG ring lasers operating at 1064 nm and 1319 nm and a doubly resonant cavity where sum-frequency generation of these wavelengths in LBO produces a diffraction-limited linearly-polarized 589-nm beam. Up to 50 W of 589-nm light for mesospheric guide-star generation has been produced. The injection-locked Nd:YAG lasers are capable of operating at up to 100 watts at 1064 nm and 60 watts at 1319 nm.