Abstract

Recent advancesin the development of nonlinear optical materials, such as AgGaS₂ and AgGaSe₂, now offer a convenient technique of generating cw tunable infrared narrow-band coherent radiation over a wide wavelength range (3 to 18 µm) by means of differencefrequency generation (DFG) at room temperature.¹ The use of semiconductor diode lasers as pump sources in the nonlinear DFG mixing process is particularly attractive, as their compact size and ease of operation allow the construction of a portable and robust mid-infrared laser source especially suitable for environmental remote sensing, pollution detection, chemical analysis, and medical research. In this paper we describe our recent progress towards the development of such a compact diode-laser based widely tunable cw DFG source with AgGaS₂, as the nonlinear optical material.

© 1994 IEEE