High-power, femtosecond, coherent yellow source using two-stage second harmonic generation of Cr2+:ZnS laser (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Using a 4.5-W average power Cr2+:ZnS laser having a pulse width 43 fs and a spectral bandwidth of 138 nm centred at 2360 nm with a repetition rate of 80 MHz, we have produced femtosecond pulses in yellow wavelength. Using a 1 mm long Type 0 MgO: PPLN crystal in the first stage of our experiment, we have generated a maximum of ~ 2.43 W power of ~ 60 fs pulse width and ~ 39 nm spectral bandwidth centred at 1180 nm with a maximum conversion efficiency as high as ~ 65%. In the second stage, two different crystals, MgO:PPLN and BIBO were used to generate ultrafast coherent yellow source. The 1.18 μm radiation is first frequency-doubled in a multigrating 1 mm long Type 0 MgO:PPLN crystal with grating periods Λ=8.9 - 9.45 μm. A coherent yellow source with wavelength tunability from 577- 589 nm with a spectral bandwidth of ∼ 2 nm and temporal pulsewidth of ∼ 913 fs was achieved. At optimum focussing, we obtained a maximum power of 0.92 W for 2.2 W of pump power having a conversion efficiency of 40%. In order to address the large GVM between 1180 nm and 590 nm wavelength, we used another 1.2 mm long nonlinear crystal BIBO for birefringent phase matching. With BIBO crystal, the near-IR radiation was efficiently frequency doubled into yellow range (~ 591 nm) with average power of ~ 1 W and having a maximum conversion efficiency as high as 47%. The generated beam has a pulse width of ~ 130 fs in Gaussian shaped and ~ 4 nm spectral bandwidth with a time-bandwidth product of 0.45 showing almost no chirp. The output beam is a Gaussian shaped transverse beam profile with measured M2 values of M2x ∼ 1.07 and M2y ∼1.01.