All-fiber frequency-doubled visible laser

All-fiber ns-pulsed visible laser at lambda = 521 nm is realized by frequency doubling an Yb-doped fiber laser with a periodically poled silica fiber. A 50-mW second-harmonic (SH) output power is produced that is over 6-orders of magnitude greater than previous results obtained with poled fibers in the visible spectral range. The normalized conversion efficiency of 0.3%/W is to date the largest demonstrated with poled fiber technology. Furthermore, 21% conversion efficiency is achieved for the doubling of 8-ps pulses from a neodymium-doped yttrium vanadate solid-state laser. The advances are made possible by the precision and flexibility offered by using the continuous periodic UV erasure, as opposite to photolithographic methods, for the fabrication of over 20-cm-long chi((2))-gratings for quasi-phase matched SH generation. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America.