Locking the cavity of a pulsed periodically poled lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator to the wavelength of a continuous-wave injection seeder by an "intensity-dip" method

Injection seeding by a single-mode continuous-wave (cw) laser provides a convenient way to achieve narrowband tunable operation of a laser with a broad spectral gain profile, or of an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Continuous single-mode tunability of the laser or OPO output usually requires the length of the optical cavity to be controlled as the injection-seeding wavelength is scanned. We report a novel variant on established methods of locking the optical cavity length to the seed wavelength. Our approach takes advantage of the resonance properties of an optical cavity. When the cavity is in resonance with the cw seed radiation, the total intensity of that radiation reflected off the cavity displays a pronounced dip; this intensity dip can be used as a locking signal to reset the cavity length piezoelectrically during each interval between the pump pulses that excite the laser or OPO. Our active cavity-locking scheme is realized in the case of a ring-cavity OPO, incorporating periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN), pumped at 1.064 mu m by a single-mode pulsed Nd:yttrium-aluminum-garnet laser and injection-seeded at its signal wavelength by a 1.55 mu m single-mode tunable diode laser. The coherent infrared output of this injection-seeded PPLN OPO is shown to be continuously tunable, with an optical bandwidth of similar to 130 MHz (0.0045 cm-1) and excellent spatial beam quality. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(99)02808-7].