Room-temperature, rapidly tunable, green-pumped continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator

• Published in: Optics letters 2017-07, Vol.42 (13), p.2635-2638
• Main Authors: Devi, Kavita, Ebrahim-Zadeh, M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0146-9592; 1539-4794
• DOI: 10.1364/OL.42.002635

We report a high-power, single-frequency, green-pumped continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator (OPO) capable of providing rapid and continuous tuning across a wide spectral range in the near-infrared at room temperature. By exploiting the nonlinear crystal of MgO:sPPLT in a fan-out grating design pumped at 532 nm in the green, the OPO can be tuned continuously across 1097-2100 nm in the idler, with corresponding signal tuning over 712-1033 nm using simple mechanical translation of the crystal at fixed temperature. The device can deliver hundreds of milliwatts of idler power across the complete tuning range, with as much as 2.2 W at 1097 nm for 9 W of input pump power at 77% pump depletion. The passive power stability of the generated idler at 1110 nm, measured at 6.8 W of pump power, is better than 1% rms over 30 min. The signal frequency stability, measured at 837 nm, is 518 MHz over 2 min, with an instantaneous linewidth of 6.9 MHz, in high beam quality.