A BaGa4Se7 crystal based pulsed mid-infrared light source with a narrow linewidth in 4-12 μm

We present a BaGa4Se7 (BGSe) crystal based coherent pulsed light source for high resolution mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy in the 4-12 mu m region. The all-solid-state system consists of an injection seeded optical parametric generator (OPG) and an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) using two KTiOPO4 crystals. The idler output of OPG-OPA and the fundamental output (1064 nm) of a wavelength stabilized Nd:YAG laser are employed for difference frequency generation of MIR pulses in the BGSe crystal. Pulsed MIR radiation in the 4-12 mu m range is obtained with typical pulse energies higher than 100 mu J and pulse durations of similar to 5 ns. By measuring H2O absorption lines in the 8 mu m region with this MIR light source and a cavity ring-down spectrometer, the linewidth of the MIR source is inferred as 120 +/- 10 MHz, which is very close to the Fourier-transform limited linewidth of 5 ns laser pulses.