Investigation of spectral bandwidth of BBO-I phase matching non-collinear optical parametric amplification from visible to near-infrared

Abstract

Laser sources which have high power, short time duration and are broadly tunable are needed for the application of ultra-fast lasers. Femtosecond optical parametric amplification (OPA) is one of the most important techniques to produce broadly tunable and several femtosecond laser pulses. To obtain an extremely short pulse, the femtosecond OPA should adequately support a large spectral bandwidth. Ultra-broadband type-I phase matching OPA based on BBO was theoretically investigated. The achromatic phase matching (APM) technology was introduced to femtosecond OPA, and a broadband phase matching condition was given when the signal beams were angularly dispersed. The methods were presented to choose the optimized non-collinear angle and angular dispersion. Effects of non-collinear angle and rate of angular dispersion to the parametric bandwidth were also discussed. The results indicate that a proper non-collinear angle of the non-collinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) and getting signal beams dispersed at the right rate in near-infrared conditions can increase the parametric bandwidth dramatically.

Keywords

nonlinear optics / broadband femtosecond optical parametric amplification (OPA) / angular dispersion / group velocity matching