Cascaded OPG based on BaGa4Se7 to broadband continuum generation in mid-IR range

Abstract

This work is devoted to the development of a broadband continuous spectrum source in the mid-IR range. This source is based on a cascaded picosecond optical parametric generation (OPG) in a BaGa4Se7 (BGSe) crystal. The first cascade is a PPLN optical parametric amplifier (OPA) tunable in the range of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$1.7-2\ \ \mu \mathrm{m}$</tex> with tunable injection seeding by PPLN optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Such sources are in demand for many applications including atmosphere and medical gas analysis.