Raman lasers based on lead tungstate crystals

Summary form only given. Recently, the spectroscopic, laser, and nonlinear optical properties of doped and undoped tungstates have been investigated. Raman laser action in lead tungstate, PbWO/sub 4/, in the picosecond regime was reported in this earlier research with conversion efficiencies as high as 40%. Tetragonal lead tungstate crystals have an active SRS vibration mode with frequency 901 cm/sup -1/ and a gain factor of 8.4 cm/GW when the pump polarization is parallel to the c-axis. From an applications point of view, an attractive feature of lead tungstate is that single crystals are already being produced commercially in large sizes with good optical properties at comparatively low cost. In this paper, we believe we report on a first set of measurements of Raman laser action in lead tungstate crystals when optically pumped by the fundamental and the first harmonic of Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers.