Abstract

Apart from very specific cases, phase-matching requirements prevent high yield in nonlinear optical up or down-conversion when using optical pulses with large bandwidth. This is particularly true in the UV domain where the nonlinear materials are very dispersive. This topic is particularly crucial for ultrashort pulses but also for the upconversion in the UV of the broadband near-infrared nanosecond pulses used in large-scale lasers for inertial confinement fusion. In the latter case it had been demonstrated that efficient frequency tripling of 1060-nm light is limited to a bandwidth of 0.2-nm wide when using KDP crystals.

© 1996 Optical Society of America