Pulsed laser with passive stabilization

A solid-state laser system comprising

• a main solid-state laser capable of being pumped into a lasing mode to emit a fundamental laser light beam
• an array of pump light emitting semiconductor diode lasers arranged to direct their pump light into the solid state laser
• a pulse controller for pulsing the diode array, and
• an intracavity nonlinear element which produces greater nonlinear conversion of the fundamental laser light when the fundamental laser light is unstable or spiking, wherein the main solid state laser and the nonlinear element reside in a laser cavity that is sufficiently short to stabilize converted output light as said array of semiconducting diode lasers is pulsed.

A laser, comprising:

• a high reflector and an output coupler defining a resonator cavity;
• a gain medium positioned in the resonator cavity;
• a diode pump source producing a pulsed pump beam incident on the gain medium to provide a fundamental wavelength beam;
• and
• a diode pump source controller coupled to the diode pump source to produce power on demand, the controller receives an input of requested laser output power and pulse length, selects and sends a current pulse to the diode pump source in response to the input such that the diode pump source produces a pump beam of an amplitude and duration suitable generate the power on demand.