Three Photon Absorption in Optical Parametric Oscillators Based on OP-GaAs

Abstract

We report on the first singly-resonant (SR), synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on orientation-patterned gallium arsenide (OP-GaAs). Together with a doubly resonant (DR) degenerate OPO based on the same OP-GaAs material, the output spectra cover 3 to 6 $\mu$m within ~3 dB of relative power. The DR-OPO has the highest output power reported to date from a femtosecond, synchronously pumped OPO based on OP-GaAs. We discovered strong three photon absorption with a coefficient of 0.35 $\pm$ 0.06 cm${}^3$/GW${}^2$ for our OP-GaAs sample, which limits the output power of these OPOs as mid-IR light sources. We present a detailed study of the three photon loss on the performance of both the SR and DR-OPOs, and compare them to those without this loss mechanism.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Two-octave-wide (3-12 μm) mid-infrared frequency comb produced as an optical subharmonic in a nondispersive cavity