Squeezed singly resonant second-harmonic generation in periodically poled lithium niobate

We determine the theoretical singly resonant second-harmonic generation squeezing performance of several cavity designs and nonlinear materials. We show that, for the doubling of the 1064-nm output of Nd:YAG lasers, monolithic cavities made from periodically poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) will produce the largest amount of squeezing. We also present experimental results for a free-space cavity with a PPLN sample that yielded slightly less than 0.6 dB of measured squeezing. The cavity performance as a function of input power agrees with our theoretical predictions and shows the superior performance of periodically poled materials for the production of bright squeezed light. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.