Injection seeded frequency stabilized Nd:YAG ring oscillator following a Pound-Drever-Hall scheme

An injection seeded Nd:YAG laser oscillator has been set up and frequency stabilized following an rf-sideband scheme. This dual rod oscillator emits pulses with 23 ns duration and 20 mJ energy. The beam quality is almost diffraction limited (M(2)=1.2). The frequency stability was characterized with a heterodyne method to 1.0 MHz root mean square (rms). This oscillator will serve as the front end for a series of lidar devices for spectrally sensitive measurements.