Abstract

Recently, significant progress has been made on the performance of continuous-wave (cw) optical parametric oscillators (OPOs). By using improved pump sources, such as diode-pumped solid-state lasers, and new nonlinear materials, cw doubly-resonant OPOs have been operated with high efficiency and narrow line width.^1,2 However, the simultaneous requirements for phase-matching and coincidence of signal and idler resonances in satisfying conserve the need to energy place severe tolerance limits on cavity-length and pump-frequency fluctuations. It is well-known that the stringent tolerances can be relaxed by resonating only the signal or idler in the OPO cavity. Unfortunately, the higher threshold of the Singly Resonant OPO (SRO) has hampered its development, and SRO operation has been limited to pulsed or continuously mode-locked pumping.³ We report the first experimental demonstration of a cw, singly-resonant optical parametric oscillator pumped by a single-frequency source.

© 1993 Optical Society of America