Authors: Alexander Gibb
Mentors: York Young
Insitution: Utah Valley University
Our research group’s long term goal is to build a student-constructed nonlinear optical system to create a tunable source of longwave infrared (LWIR) photons for probing molecules for early detection of disease in human tissue.
I previously developed a diode laser system as the optical pump for a 5 Watt Nd:YVO4 laser which was reported at UCUR in Feb 2023. However, recent nonlinear optical calculations for our optical parametric oscillator (OPO) show that we will need the average laser power from that Nd:YVO4 laser to be in the 7-8 Watt range. My work to power scale the Nd:YVO4 laser is described in this presentation.