Abstract

The synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is potentially the ideal source for the many applications requiring widely tunable ultrashort pulses. For high stability, cw pumped operation is required, with only one of the two generated waves being resonated in a singly resonant oscillator (SRO). CW synchronously-pumped singly-resonant OPO’s have been demonstrated using both dye lasers (1-4) and Ti:Sapphire lasers (5,6) as the pump source. For a practical, efficient, reliable and compact device, an all-solid-state pump source is favourable. We recently reported the operation of such a system, achieving transform- limited pulses of ~ 1ps duration tunable over the range 1.0-1.1µm (7).

© 1993 Optical Society of America