Generation of Watt-Level Orbital Poincaré Sphere Modes from a Self-Raman Nd:GdVO4 Laser

We demonstrate the direct generation of watt-level orbital Poincare sphere (OPS) modes operating at 1.173 mu m, corresponding to the first-Stokes emission of the 882 cm(-1) Raman shift in Nd:GdVO4 crystal, by employing a tight needle pumping beam with an off-axis pumping geometry. Maximum Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) mode output power of similar to 1.2 W was achieved, corresponding an optical conversion efficiency of 14.0 %.