Deep ultraviolet diamond Raman laser.

We present a synchronously pumped diamond Raman laser operating at 275.7 nm pumped by the 4th harmonic of a mode locked Nd:YVO4 laser. The laser had a threshold pump pulse energy of 5.8 nJ and generated up to 0.96 nJ pulses at 10.3% conversion efficiency. The results agree well with a numerical model that includes two-photon absorption of the pump and Stokes beams and uses a Raman gain coefficient of diamond of 100 cm/GW. We also report on the observation of nanometer scale two-photon assisted etching of the diamond crystal surfaces.