Broadly tunable, intracavity injection-seeded, hybrid optical parametric oscillator

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Nonlinear Optics
• Laser Technology

Background:

• Pulsed optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) are crucial for tunable light generation.
• Achieving narrow linewidths and spectral control in pulsed OPOs across their full tuning range remains a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel injection seeding approach for pulsed OPOs.
• To demonstrate spectral control and bandwidth reduction down to single-mode operation.

Main Methods:

• A hybrid OPO design utilizing a continuous-wave (cw) OPO to injection seed a pulsed OPO within a single composite cavity.
• Employing two identical MgO-doped periodically poled lithium niobate crystals.

Main Results:

• Achieved single-frequency linewidth as narrow as 7.2 MHz for signal pulses across 1510-1677 nm.
• Demonstrated reduced rise time, increased pump depletion, and a major reduction in threshold.
• Observed substantial enhancement in output power and extraction efficiency.

Conclusions:

• The hybrid cw-seeded pulsed OPO offers effective spectral control over the entire tuning range.
• This approach significantly improves the performance of pulsed OPOs, enabling single-mode operation and higher efficiency.