Jg. Haub et al., SPECTROSCOPIC AND NONLINEAR-OPTICAL APPLICATIONS OF A TUNABLE BETA-BARIUM BORATE OPTICAL PARAMETRIC OSCILLATOR, Journal of the Optical Society of America. B, Optical physics, 10(9), 1993, pp. 1765-1777
A pulsed beta-barium borate optical parametric oscillator (BBO OPO) se
rves as the tunable source of coherent radiation for linear and nonlin
ear-optical spectroscopic applications: photoacoustic absorption, opti
cal double resonance, and coherent Raman spectroscopy. The BBO OPO is
used spectroscopically either as a free-running broadband device with
single multiplex detection or as a continuously tunable narrow-band de
vice controlled by injection seeding. A single BBO crystal offers a wi
de fundamental OPO tuning range (0.41-2.7 mum) that can be extended fu
rther into the ultraviolet and infrared regions by additional nonlinea
r-optical stages. Pumped at 355 ran by a single-mode Nd-YAG laser, the
BBO OPO operates with high conversion efficiency and damage threshold
and adequate beam quality for spectroscopic and nonlinear-optical pur
poses.