Abstract

Only recently researchers started to investigate the frequency conversion of high power picosecond pulses produced by regenerative amplification¹. The high power densities easily achieved with short, pulses allow efficient generation of parametric fluorescence. However, experiments show that the efficiencies achieved in these systems are not as high as one would expect from a simple calculation, due to the temporal and spatial pulse shape, which has to be considered in a reasonably accurate model^2,3. We performed calculations on the efficiency of the parametric conversion for various temporal and spatial pulse profiles and for different arrangements of a picosecond optical parametric generator (OPG) and optical parametric amplifier (OPA) combination. In the numerical simulation and the experiments we used a KTP crystal pumped with the fundamental of an all-solid-state Nd:YAG regenerative amplifier.

© 1996 IEEE