Hannover 2016 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 45: Ultrashort Laser Pulses I

Q 45.3: Talk

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 11:30–11:45, a310

Rapidly, electronically tunable fiber-based optical parametric oscillator — •Maximilian Brinkmann, Sarah Janfrüchte, Sven Dobner, and Carsten Fallnich — Institute of Applied Physics, University of Münster, Germany

We present a fiber-based optical parametric oscillator (FOPO) synchronously pumped by an amplified laser diode at a wavelength of 1030 nm, with a repetition rate of about 1 MHz and a pulse duration of 10 ps. The FOPO consisted of 10 cm of highly nonlinear photonic-crystal fiber to frequency-convert the pump pulses via four-wave mixing and about 200 m of single-mode fiber to form the resonator. Due to dispersion in the fiber resonator, the fed back signal pulse was temporarily stretched, such that only a narrow spectral part of it overlapped with the next pump pulse and was amplified. Via this dispersion filtering, output idler pulses with a bandwidth of about 3 nm, a temporal duration of about 5 ps and a pulse energy up to 20 nJ could be produced. By changing the repetition rate of the pump laser diode by about 2 kHz, the wavelength of the output pulses could be tuned between 1130 and 1310 nm. As this tuning mechanism was solely based on electronical means, we were able to tune the FOPO with a speed of 8 µs per wavelength step, independent of the width of the step, which is several orders of magnitude faster than achieved with similar FOPOs tuned via a mechanical delay line or with temperature-controlled OPOs. Due to the rapidly and widely tunable wavelength and the high energy of its output pulses, the FOPO should be well suited for coherent Raman or multi-photon microscopy.