SPIE Photonics West 2012

21-26 January 2012

The Moscone Center,
San Francisco,
California,
USA

Our booth # 1107
(South Hall)

OPO

OPO (Optical Parametric Oscillator) is non-linear process where the response of the non-linear material to a pump photon (wp) are two photons with frequencies (ws, wi) with wp = ws + wi. The signal frequency (ws) is assumed to be the one pursued, whereas the idler frequency (wi) is generally useless. A variant of OPO is OPA (Optical Parametric Amplification) where the signal is seeded with an independant laser emitting at the signal frequency.

The main application of an OPO is to generate longer wavelengths, like pulsed lasers at aroud 1.55 µm, from a 1.064µm pump. The former wavelength lies in the eye-safe band and is commonly used by range-finding devices. But an OPO can also be used to generate longer wavelengths, or various wavelengths in the visible when pumped at 355nm. Every OPO crystal we manufacture for a pump at 1.064µm and a signal around 1.55µm is checked on our OPO test bench.

Process of OPO frequency conversion (KTP, KTA and BBO)