Abstract
We report parametric generation of gigahertz modulated pulses in the visible and near infrared by use of a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) pumped with the second harmonic of a modulated Nd:YAG laser at 0.532 μm. We modulated the pump laser by splitting the beam into two, shifting the frequency of one beam by focusing it into a stimulated Brillouin scattering cell, and then heterodyning the shifted and the unshifted beams. The resultant amplitude-modulated pulse was then doubled in a KD*P crystal. The OPO output pulse maintains the modulation depth of the pump pulse if the cavity length is close to an integer multiple of the pulse-to-pulse separation. Overall performance was characterized by use of a simple linear confguration over a wide range of input energies to yield signal efficiencies of greater than 10% in the 0.69–0.71-μm range.
© 1994 Optical Society of America
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