High-average-power single-frequency pulse optical parametric oscillator based on pulse-integrated seed-injection automatic locking.

ABSTRACT

Near-infrared nanosecond (ns) single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) pulse light generated from an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is an important source in nonlinear optics and high-precision spectral analysis. In this Letter, a stable SLM near-infrared ns pulse light source generated from the OPO is presented, which is achieved by developing a seed-injection automatic locking technique based on a pulse-integrated photodetector (PIPD). Depending on the PIPD, the peak power of the pulse light detected by the photodiode is converted to the average power by integrating several pulses. As a result, the detector saturation is thoroughly eliminated, and the interference signal including the resonance point between seed and pulse lights can easily be attained by scanning the resonator length. On this basis, a microcontroller unit (MCU) is employed to realize automatic locking by looking for the minimum value of the interference signal. Finally, a SLM 824 nm pulse light source with an output power of 20.5 W and a linewidth of 51.42 MHz is obtained. The presented method can pave the way to implement a low-cost and compact high-average-power SLM pulse OPO.