We demonstrate a lithium triborate (LBO) optical parametric oscillator (OPO), which is synchronously pumped with a pulse-compressed and frequency-doubled master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) system consisting of a gain-switched laser diode and a series of Ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers. The 20ps pulses from the MOPA were compressed in a transmission grating compressor down to 4.4ps with a throughput efficiency of ~70% and subsequently frequency-doubled with an efficiency of ~60% in a 20mm long LBO to a maximum of ~25W. With a typical pump power of 17W for the OPO, we obtained a maximum combined signal and idler output power of 2.5W (at 877nm) and 1.7W (at 1.3μm). Individually, a maximum signal power of up to 3.7W at 740 nm was obtained with a signal pulse duration of ~3.2ps. The OPO was widely tunable from 651nm-1040nm (signal) and from 1081nm-2851nm (idler). To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power from a green-pumped LBO OPO. The fiber-based pump source can potentially be operated between 100MHz and 1GHz, which in combination with the few-picosecond pulses and the near-IR tunability of the OPO is a very attractive source for nonlinear microscopy.

Date Published: 8 May 2012
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8433, Laser Sources and Applications, 843302 (8 May 2012);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8433:
Laser Sources and Applications
Thomas Graf; Jacob I. Mackenzie; Helena Jelínková; John Powell, Editor(s)