Abstract

The incorporation of an OPO as the light source for a laser radar system permits the attainment of strategic wavelengths difficult to reach with existing lasers and enables tunability. Unfortunately, OPO’s are notoriously unstable, emitting multimode radiation over very broad bandwidths, making them impractical as a light source for a coherent system. One way to eliminate this problem is to inject a small amount of light from a single longitudinal mode laser into the OPO cavity. If the cavity is resonant with the injected signal, that single mode dominates over all other modes, forcing the OPO to oscillate on that single wavelength. This is the process known as seeding, and has previously been demonstrated in OPO’s.¹

© 1995 Optical Society of America