Experimental and theoretical study on an intracavity KTiOPO4 optical parametric oscillator pumped by a dual loss modulated Q-switched and mode-locked laser

Abstract

In this paper, a sub-nanosecond KTiOPO4 (KTP)-based intracavity optical parametric oscillator (IOPO) pumped by a dual-loss modulated Q-switched and mode-locked (QML) laser with an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) and a Cr4+:YAG saturable absorber (Cr4+:YAG-SA) has been demonstrated. By changing the initial transmission of Cr4+:YAG-SA and the transmission of the output coupler at the signal wavelength, the signal pulse width compression can be realized. At an incident pump power of 8.3W and an AOM repetition rate of 15kHz, a single signal pulse underneath Q-switched envelope with the shortest pulse width of 220ps was obtained. The experimental results reveal that this is a simple and effective way to obtain the sub-nanosecond OPO signal pulses. In addition, the related coupled rate equations have been set up and the simulation results agreed with the experimental results well.