Continuous wave Nd:YAG-BiBO blue laser under direct 869 nm pumping

We report a blue laser at 473 nm generation by intracavity frequency doubling of a continuous wave (CW) laser operation of a 946 nm Nd:YAG laser under in-band diode pumping at 869 nm. An BiBO crystal, cut for critical type I phase matching at room temperature is used for second harmonic generation of the laser. At an incident pump power of 8.6 W, as high as 721 mW of CW output power at 473 nm is achieved. The optical-to-optical conversion efficiency is up to 8.4%, and the fluctuation of the blue output power was better than 3.5% in the given 30 min.