High power tunable picosecond green laser pulse generation by frequency doubling of an Yb-doped fiber power amplifier seeded by a gain switch laser diode

A compact tunable high power picosecond green laser pulse source based on frequency doubling of an Yb-doped fiber amplifier seeded by a gain switch laser diode has been developed. The fiber amplifier generates the picosecond infrared pulses with average power of 10.3 W, repetition rate of 1 MHz, pulse duration of 150 ps, and tunable range of 20 nm around 1064 nm. For underwater use, the tunable output infrared pulses are frequency doubled into picosecond green laser pulses, which can be tuned from 527 to 537 nm with average power of more than 1.1 W, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency of 10.7% by a BBO nonlinear crystal. This kind of laser source will have potential application for underwater optical communication.