Fiber Optical Parametric Oscillator for High Power, High Efficiency Short-Wavelength Generation

This report results from a contract tasking University of Southampton as follows. Optical parametric fiber oscillators are based on four-wave mixing. Four-wave mixing (FWM), like stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), relies on the third order nonlinearity of the fiber. Fiber Raman devices are capable o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Nilsson, Johan, van der Westhuizen, Gysbert
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Electrical and Electronic Equipment
FIBER OPTICS
FIBRE LASERS
FOREIGN REPORTS
FREQUENCY SHIFT
HIGH POWER
LASERS
NONLINEAR OPTICS
OPTICAL PARAMETRIC OSCILLATORS
OSCILLATORS
PE61102F
SHORT WAVELENGTHS
UNITED KINGDOM
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Summary:This report results from a contract tasking University of Southampton as follows. Optical parametric fiber oscillators are based on four-wave mixing. Four-wave mixing (FWM), like stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), relies on the third order nonlinearity of the fiber. Fiber Raman devices are capable of high efficiency ( 80%) and high power ( 10 W), but these generate wavelengths that are longer than the pump wavelength. By contrast, FWM is capable of generating shorter wavelengths than the pump, and this provides many new opportunities, including the possibility to generate high-power 800 nm radiation starting with highly efficient YDFLs. Whereas SRS ideally generates one Stokes photon for every converted pump photon, FWM generates one Stokes and one anti-Stokes photon for every two pump photons. Thus, for small wavelength shifts, the conversion efficiency into the shorter-wavelength anti-Stokes wave is limited to 50%. However, for larger shifts the efficiency can be larger. For generation of 780 nm light from 1080 nm, the theoretical photon-energy limited conversion efficiency becomes 69%, achievable if all pump photons are converted to anti-Stokes (signal) and Stokes (idler) photons. Complete conversion of the pump photons is theoretically possible in the cw regime [1] and near-complete conversion has been demonstrated experimentally in the cw regime [2], [3]. However the powers have been relatively low and the frequency shifts relatively small. Furthermore the wavelengths have been around 1550 nm. The original document contains color images.