Investigation of thermally-induced phase mismatching in continuous-wave second harmonic generation: A theoretical model

A fraction of the fundamental beam energy deposited into nonlinear crystals to generate second harmonic waves (SHW) causes a temperature gradient within the crystal. This temperature inhomogeneity can alter the refractive index of the medium leading to a well-known effect called thermal dispersion. Therefore, the generated SHW suffers from thermal lensing and a longitudinal thermal phase mismatching. In this work by coupling the heat equation with second harmonic generation (SHG) formalism applied to type-II configuration along with walk-off effect, we investigate the continuous wave (CW) SHW beam profile and conversion efficiency when a non-linear KTP crystal is under induced thermal load. We have demonstrated for average and high powers, the thermal de-phasing lead to considerable reduction in SHG compared to an ideal case in which induced heat is neglected. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America