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I've heard that common way to get 354nm laser is to triple 1064nm Nd:YAG one.

But how to make non-linear crystal to do tripling instead of doubling? What are the best crystals for tripling and what's the efficiency?

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I up-voted, but then found rp-photonics.com/frequency_tripling.html in about 5 seconds, so perhaps I shouldn't have. – Peter Morgan Oct 21 '11 at 17:18
@Peter Morgan It's nice to know keywords to goodle. I always google first, but I failed thanks to wrong keywords. – BarsMonster Oct 22 '11 at 2:35

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You typically use a frequency doubler (more efficent) and then mix the doubled and original in a second crystal to generate the tripled as a harmonic (see http://www.rp-photonics.com/frequency_tripling.html)

No idea how that happens - personally I always considered them to be magic crystals !

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""No idea how that happens "" Simple trignometric functions, and nonlinear polarizability of crystals. The latter can be third or second order (symmetric or not to origin) and that's it. Superheterodynamic radio receivers work by this principle since about 1920. – Georg Oct 21 '11 at 18:01
Be aware that the tripling step is significantly more difficult to align than the doubling, since you need to align two beams to the crystal axis rather than one. Also a delay line is usually necessary to realign the pulses temporally. – user2963 Oct 21 '11 at 21:13
@Georg - didn't know it was a polarization effect. The doublers are simple enough but never used triplers. – Martin Beckett Oct 22 '11 at 3:33

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