Intracavity electrooptic frequency tuning, polarization switching, and Q-switching of a Nd:YAG laser oscillator

An intracavity voltage-tunable laser frequency and polarization selector consisting of a birefringent electrooptic crystal and a partial polarizer is presented. The polarization eigenmodes and eigenvalues of this system have been calculated and verified by experimental results showing electronic frequency tuning of a CW Nd:YAG laser over at least 130 GHz at 1.06 micron. Electronic polarization switching of the laser oscillation between orthogonal linear polarizations is also obtained.