A single-longitudinal-mode continuous-wave laser at 2.05 μm pumped by a Tm-fibre laser**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61308009 and 61405047), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2016T90287 and 2015M570290), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Grant No. HIT.NSRIF.2015042), and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province, China (Grant No.

Abstract

We present a single-longitudinal-mode continuous-wave Ho :YVO4 laser at 2.05 pumped by a Tm-doped fibre laser. Use of a cavity etalon enables spectral selectivity for single-mode operation. The highest power achieved in the single longitudinal mode at 2052.5 nm is 282 mW at a slope efficiency of 6.9%, corresponding to an optical conversion efficiency of 3.0%. These features demonstrate that this single-longitudinal-mode Ho:YVO4 laser is suitable for use as a seed laser in some Lidar systems (e.g., coherent Lidar or differential absorption Lidar). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on such a single-longitudinal-mode Ho:YVO4 laser at 2.05 m.