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51-W average power, 169-fs pulses from an ultrafast non-collinear optical parametric oscillator

L. Lang, C. P. Bauer, C. R. Phillips, and U. Keller

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

We present a high power optical parametric oscillator (OPO) synchronously pumped by the second-harmonic of a modelocked 1030-nm thin-disk laser (TDL) oscillator. The OPO delivers an average power of 51.1 W around degeneracy (1030 nm) with a 10.2-MHz repetition-rate. After extra-cavity dispersion compensation using dispersive mirrors, we obtain a pulse duration of 169 fs, which is 4.6× shorter than the TDL pulse duration of 770 fs. The TDL has 250 W average power, which is converted to 215 W at the second-harmonic. Hence, the OPO exhibits a high photon conversion efficiency of 47% (ratio of signal photons to 515-nm pump photons). Moreover, the OPO generates a peak power of 26.2 MW, which is very similar to the 28.0-MW peak power of the TDL. To facilitate continuous tuning around degeneracy and convenient extraction of the pump and idler beams, the OPO is operated in a noncollinear configuration. A linear cavity configuration was chosen since it offers easy alignment and straightforward cavity length tuning. To the best of our knowledge, this source has the highest average power generated by any ultrafast OPO, and the shortest pulse duration for any >5-W OPO. This result is an important step to adding wavelength tunability to high power Yb-based laser sources without the complexity of either laser or parametric amplifier systems.

© 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

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Data availability

Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.

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Figures (2)
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Design of OPO cavity. a) Layout of the SHG module (orange and green path) and OPO cavity (red path). The polarization of the beams interacting in the two nonlinear crystals is indicated by the arrows, together with the orientation of the c-axis of the BBO crystal. The inset image (top left) shows an image of the cavity mode (M2 < 1.1). The inset diagram (bottom right) shows a close-up of the interaction geometry in the BBO crystal (angles not to scale). b) 1/e2 mode size evolution throughout the cavity. The markers indicate the position of the BBO (purple square), the concave mirrors (CCM, red dots) and OC (green triangle), respectively. The gray area indicates the approximate radius of the pump beam at the crystal.

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Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Diagnostics of the OPO output. a) Output power of the signal (blue squares) and idler (red circles), respectively as a function of pump power. Also shown is the optical-to-optical efficiency of the signal beam (green triangles). b-e) detailed diagnostics at the highest output power (highlighted point in a). b) Measured and c) retrieved FROG spectrogram. d) Temporal shape of the pulses as retrieved from the FROG measurement (red), together with the temporal phase (green). e) Optical spectrum of the OPO pulses, as measured with the OSA (grey) and as retrieved from the FROG measurement (red). Also shown is the spectrum of the TDL (blue), and the spectral phase (green).

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Tables (1)

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Table 1. Key parameters of the TDL and of the OPO.

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