Abstract

Miniature lithium neodymium tetraphosphate (LNP) lasers are tow threshold efficient sources of IR laser light when pumped with low power argonion visible dye or diode lasers.^1,2 Unfortunately, thermal effects have limited the maximum output powers to <5 mW with visible pump sources.² The recent commercial availability of cw argon-ion laser pumped Ti:sapphire lasers has facilitated our study bf high power LNP lasers pumped near the 802-nm absorption maximum. Because of the reduced Stokes losses possible with IR pumping, we found that thermal effects were insignificant at pump powers exceeding 100 mW.

© 1989 Optical Society of America