High-power widely-tunable picosecond pulses from an all-solid-state synchronously-pumped optical parametric oscillator

摘要

The operation is reported of an all-solid-state singly-resonant synchronously-pumped lithium triborate optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Two different configurations of the gain medium are reported. The first gain medium has antireflection-coated faces, and the second Brewster-angled faces. The antireflection-coated (Brewster-angled) device had an oscillation-threshold average pump power of 90 mW (170 mW) at 523 nm. At 2.8 (1.9) times threshold, the pump depletion was 50% (60%), and the oscillator converted 30% (34%) of the pump radiation into tunable output in pulses of ~1 ps duration. Temperature-tuned noncritical phase matching in the parametric oscillator yielded radiation continuously tunable over the range 0.85-1.36µm (0.72-1.91µm) with up to 43 mW (89 mW) of average power in the resonated wave output, and 33 mW (44 mW) in the nonresonated wave output.