Influence of pump source beam quality and OPO cavity resonance regime on output characteristics of mid-infrared ZGP-OPO laser
摘要
In this paper, the influence of the pump-beam quality on the output of a ZGP-OPO pumped by a Q-switched Ho: YLF laser at 2.056 μm wavelength was studied. In the experimental setup, two cavity resonance regimes were explored. First, a U-shape Q-switched resonator at two types of concave-concave and concave-convex structures was investigated. Output energies of 60 and 55 mJ at 24.5 ns of pulse duration were achieved for above resonators mentioned with double-pass pumping, respectively. In the concave-convex resonator, a far-field beam divergence angle of about 0.9 mrad was recorded, although the conversion efficiency was lower. The obtained experimental results confirm the LASCAD simulations of a 2-micron Q-switched laser. The maximum conversion efficiency of the linear OPO cavity with a plano-parallel structure was recorded. A 28.5 mJ total energy of parametric waves was measured at the PE-DRO resonance regimes pumped by 55 mJ incident energy with the concave-convex resonator at 2056.8 nm Q-switched laser, which corresponds to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 51.8%. The experimental results of OPOs confirmed the simulation results by applying the differences in wavefront curvature and beam characteristics of the incident wave. The peak of signal and idler waves are 3779.5 and 4507.6 nm, respectively. The pulse width is about 22.4 ns at the PE-DRO resonance regime.