| The purpose of this Thesis was to design, fabricate and test single-frequency solid-state microchip lasers operating at 1.32 The microchip laser concept eliminated the need for intracavity components in single-frequency diode-pumped solid-state lasers. The microchip laser's low-noise performance, coupled with high-volume production techniques make it a viable candidate for original-equipment-manufacturing applications, which require robust lasers in a small package with low cost.This Thesis presents several methods for achieving frequency tuning in microchip lasers, including piezoelectric modulation, pump-diode current modulation, and electro-optic tuning, and the experiments used to evaluate two of these approaches. The results of tuning measurements indicated that piezoelectric modulation was limited in performance due to structural resonances and sensitivities to external forces typically encountered in gyro environments. Pump-diode current modulation exhibited a tuning bandwidth that rolled off at... |
