Blue diode pumped solid-state lasers for digital projection

Lasers present many advantages over currently used light sources for projection applications. Compact as well as efficient displays can be realized with RGB laser systems. The extreme brightness and collimation of lasers enable very efficient light collection. For portable, battery-powered microprojectors or even integrated devices, where the efficiency becomes even more critical, 50 mW per color is enough for a luminous flux on the projection screen of 20 lm. While blue and red diode lasers in this power range are becoming widely available, the bottleneck for this application is still the lack of integrated green laser sources. We present here a blue-diode pumped Pr(3+)-doped LiYF laser emitting at 523 nm. By optimizing on many aspects of the crystal and resonator, we increased the laser output power up to 169.4 mW, which corresponds to a total power conversion efficiency of 7%. Moreover, lasing in red can be obtained with the same crystal with similar or even better output powers. This makes the Pr:YLF laser an ideal candidate for an RGB projection source together with blue InGaN diodes.