Abstract
A diode-pumped all-solid-state ultraviolet (UV) laser at 355 nm with pulse duration as short as 4.5 ns and peak power of 5.96 kW is proposed. The output UV light at 355 nm is obtained by extracavity sum-frequency mixing and has a power of 536 mW at the incident pump power of 15.65 W, corresponding to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 3.4%, the energy distribution of the UV light is near TEM00 and the power stability in an hour is better than ± 5.2%. Taking into account the thermal effects of the gain medium Nd:YVO4 crystal at high incident pump power, a plane-to-plane cavity is chosen to take advantage of the maximum pump power and obtain the compact configuration.