Abstract

The optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) with extremely broad tuning range, ease of operation, high conversion efficiency, and solid-state nature are convenient sources for the generation of widely tunable picosecond and femtosecond light pulses. Many experiments in the time resolved spectroscopy demand the pulses free of temporal substructure and possibly transform limited. The transform limited or near to transform limited subpicosecond and picosecond pulses in OPOs can be achieved by properly chosen crystals when high quality pump pulses are available or by introduction of wavelength selective elements.¹ But even in these cases the generated OPO pulse bandwidth can be broadened by self- and cross-phase modulation² because the high intensity pulses are needed for the pumping.

© 1994 IEEE