Highly efficient second-harmonic and sum-frequency generation of nanosecond pulses in a cascaded erbium-doped fiber:periodically poled lithium niobate source

By combining erbium-doped fiber sources based on a large mode-area design and periodically poled lithium niobate, we have obtained single-pass conversion efficiencies of as much as 83% (energy efficiency) for second-harmonic generation into the near IR (768 nm) and of 34% for sum-frequency generation into the green (512 nm) for nanosecond pulses, using first-order quasi-phase matching. Pulse energies in excess of 80microJ of second harmonic have been obtained from systems pumped by a single laser diode.