Abstract

Crystal growth experiments carried out in our laboratory have led to the routine production of large β-BaB₂O₄ crystal boules of 060mm x 12mm¹, Single crystals as large as 1 cm³ have been cut from these boules for characterization and device applications^1-3. The SHG tuning curves obtained from these crystals are in excellent agreement with those reported in the literature¹, indicating that our crystals are identical to the ones grown by Jiang and coworkers⁴. We report here experimental results on the use of these crystals in a visible to near-IR optical parametric oscillator, including the important blue-green region, for the first time. In addition, we report the observation of parametric luminescence over the entire type I phase matching range from ~0.3-3.3 µm with the 354.7 nm and 266 nm pump beams, A previously reported demonstration of optical parametric oscillation in β-BaB₂O₄ crystals from Pujian Institute was based on the frequency doubled output of a Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm with the optical parametric oscillation limited to the 0.9-1.2 µm spectral range⁵.

© 1988 Optical Society of America