Second-harmonic generation efficiency for multifrequency ytterbium-doped fibre laser radiation

The second-harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency for cw Yb-doped fibre laser radiation, which is characterised by many longitudinal modes with random phases, is compared with the SHG efficiency for amplified single-frequency Nd : YAG laser radiation in ppLN and KTP crystals, characterised by the type-I and type-IIphase matching, respectively. It is shown that the conversion efficiency into the second harmonic in the multifrequency regime for both crystals is higher by a factor of about 1.6, a value close to the calculated enhancement (2 for the Gaussian mode statistics). This difference is explained by possible deviation of the statistics of the Yb-doped fibre laser radiation from Gaussian, which is confirmed by measurements of the laser temporal dynamics.