Diamond Sodium Guide Star Laser Pulsed at Larmor Frequency

Sodium guider star lasers, pulsed at the Larmor frequency have great advantages compared to those operating in the continuous-wave or quasi-continuous-wave regimes for the applications of ground-based astronomical telescopes and remote sensing of geomagnetic field [1], [2]. In this work, we demonstrate a diamond sodium guide star laser pulsed at a repetition rate of 350 kHz with a duty cycle of 19% and a high peak power of 179 W. The single-frequency 589 nm laser reaches an average output power of 32.6 W at the pump power of 75.6 W with an efficient conversion of 43% and spectral linewidth of 15.8 MHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest power from all sodium lasers operating at the Larmor frequency reported to-date [3].