NONCRITICALLY PHASE-MATCHED CONTINUOUS-WAVE MODE-LOCKED SINGLY RESONANT OPTICAL PARAMETRIC OSCILLATOR SYNCHRONOUSLY PUMPED BY A TI-SAPPHIRE LASER

Efficient operation of a cw mode-locked singly resonant optical parametric oscillator of noncritically phase-matched KTiOPO4 is demonstrated. The optical parametric oscillator is synchronously pumped by an 82-MHz-repetition-rate mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser with pump-pulse lengths of 1.4 ps. We accomplished tuning of the optical parametric oscillator by tuning the wavelength of the pump laser. A variation of the Ti:sapphire laser wavelength in the range 720 nm < lambda(p) < 853 nm tunes the signal wave from 1.052 mum < lambda < 1.214 mum and the idler wave from 2.286 < lambda(i) < 2.871 mum. We achieved stable operation with transform-limited pulses of 1.2-ps length over the entire tuning range. We obtained 700 mW of maximum average output power at the maximum of the tuning curve for the idler and signal waves, corresponding to an efficiency of 42%.