All-solid-state picosecond tunable source of near-infrared radiation.

A quasi-cw diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser, mode locked by a nonlinear mirror and stabilized by an acousto-optic modulator, has been developed that generates 31-ps, 23-microJ pulses. Employing this source with a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal in a traveling-wave geometry, we obtained extracavity frequency conversion with pump depletion of as much as 62% in the near infrared (1.46- 1.56 microm) with a pulse spectral width of 1.5nm and a beam quality M(2)=1.7.

Matching of group velocities by spatial walk-off in collinear three-wave interaction with tilted pulses.

We demonstrate that, for tilted pulses, the contribution to group velocity that is due to spatial walk-off can compensate for the group-velocity mismatch in three-wave interactions. With 100-fs, 0.4-Zmicrom pump pulses in beta-barium borate, we obtained efficient parametric generation of collinear superfluorescence tunable in the range from 0.456 to 3.25 microm.

Visible pulses of 100 fs and 100 µJ from an upconverted parametric generator.

Upconversion by sum-frequency and second-harmonic generation of pulses from a Ti:sapphire-pumped parametric generator provides 50-120 µJ, sub-100 fs, bandwidth-limited pulses at 470-700 nm.