Efficient Eye-Safe Nd:YVO4 Self-Raman Laser In-Band Pumped at 914 nm

An efficient Q-switched eye-safe Nd:YVO
₄
self-Raman laser, which we believe to be the first one in-band pumped at 914 nm, is presented, and 2.58 W of 1525-nm Stokes output was generated under the absorbed pump power of 10.2 W with a high repetition rate of 100 kHz, corresponding to a conversion efficiency of 25.3%. The optical efficiency with respect to incident pump also reached 16.4%. Influences of crystal temperature and dopant concentration on the performance of the eye-safe self-Raman laser were experimentally investigated.