Optical parametric oscillator based on orientation-patterned GaAs

摘要

We demonstrate an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on GaAs. The OPO utilized an all-epitaxially-grownorientation-patterned GaAs (OP-GaAs) crystal, 0.5-mm-thick, 5-mm-wide, and 11-mm-long, with a domain reversalperiod of 61.2 μm. By tuning either the near-IR pump wavelength between 1.75 and 2 μm, or the temperature of theGaAs crystal, the mid-IR output tuned between 2 and 11 μm, limited only by the spectral range of the OPO mirrors. Thepump threshold of the singly-resonant OPO was 16 μJ for the 6-ns pump pulses, and the photon conversion slopeefficiency reached 54%. Also, we show experimentally the possibility of pump-polarization-independent frequencyconversion in GaAs.