7.5 W blue light generation at 452 nm by internal frequency doubling of a continuous-wave Nd-doped fiber laser

We present the first frequency-doubled neodymium-doped fiber laser generating multi-watt CW power near 450 nm. A bow-tie resonator incorporating a LBO nonlinear crystal is integrated within a Nd-doped fiber laser emitting near 900 nm. This scheme achieves an IR to blue conversion efficiency close to 55% without any active control of the internal resonant cavity. As a result, up to 7.5 W of linearly-polarized blue power is generated, with beam quality factors M ~1.0 and M ~1.5. A simple numerical model has been developed to optimize and analyse the IR to blue conversion efficiency in the resonant cavity. Performance limitations and prospects for further improvements are discussed.