4-8 July 2016
Kramer Law building
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
<a href="http://events.saip.org.za/internalPage.py?pageId=10&confId=86">The Proceedings of SAIP2016</a> published on 24 December 2017

14 W Mid-Infrared Optical Parametric Oscillator based on Zinc Germanium Phosphate

8 Jul 2016, 10:20
20m
5C (Kramer Law building)

5C

Kramer Law building

UCT Middle Campus Cape Town
Oral Presentation Track C - Photonics Photonics

Speaker

Dr Wayne Koen (CSIR National Laser Centre)

Abstract content <br> &nbsp; (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>

Although laser sources emitting in the 3-5 micron region is of great interest for applications in remote sensing, medicine, and directed infra-red countermeasures; the availability of high-power sources emitting in this region remains limited.
An efficient approach to obtain coherent light in the 3-5 micron region is by converting light from a 2 micron laser source, such as a pulsed solid-state Ho:YLF laser or thulium fibre laser, by pumping an optical parametric oscillator (OPO).
In this paper we present a high-power mid-infrared OPO based on Zinc Germanium Phosphate (ZnGeP2). The OPO consisted of a linear, single-pass-pump cavity containing a single ZGP crystal. The ZGP crystal was pumped with a 2064 nm Ho:YLF master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) that was developed at the National Laser Centre. The input coupler mirror was highly reflective for 3 to 5 micron light and highly transmissive for the pump light, while the output coupler mirror was partially reflective from 3 to 5 micron, while being highly transmissive for the pump light.
The OPO had a slope efficiency of 35% with regards to incident pump power when operated at a pulse repetition frequency of 20 kHz. A maximum output power of 14 W was measured when pumped with 48.8 W. This was a significant improvement on previous work, where we obtained 5 W from a similar configuration. The OPO operated near degeneracy at a centre wavelength of 4.1 micron. The beam quality factor was measured to be better than 4 at 10 W of output power.

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Primary author

Dr Wayne Koen (CSIR National Laser Centre)

Co-authors

Mr Cobus Jacobs (CSIR National Laser Centre) Mr Daniel Morris (University of Pretoria) Dr Hencharl Strauss (CSIR (National Laser Centre)) Dr Lorinda Wu (CSIR-NLC)

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