Review Article

Power scaling of tunable, narrowband, non-resonant PPLN optical parametric oscillators

¹ Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy, 2a Max Born Str., 12489 Berlin, Germany
² State Key Laboratory of Functional Crystals and Devices, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, 350002 Fujian, PR China
³ Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031 Anhui, PR China
⁴ Laser Laboratory, Physics Department, Burdwan University, 713104 Burdwan, India
⁵ Untere Gaisäckerstr. 10, 79761 Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany
⁶ Blackett Laboratory, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BW, UK
⁷ CANLAS GmbH, Schwarzschildstr. 12, 12489 Berlin, Germany
⁸ CREOL, College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA
⁹ French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis, ISL, 5, rue du General Cassagnou, 68301 Saint-Louis, France
¹⁰ APE Angewandte Physik & Elektronik GmbH, Plauener Str. 163-165, Haus N, 13053 Berlin, Germany
¹¹ Research Center for Crystal Materials, Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 830011 Urumqi, PR China

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 30 September 2025
Accepted: 3 December 2025

Abstract

We review our recent achievements with narrowband, nanosecond, non-resonant optical parametric oscillators based on periodically-poled LiNbO₃, which are pumped at 1064 nm and emit close to degeneracy in the near-IR part of the spectrum between 1860 and 2486 nm. The average output power has been scaled up to the 10-W level with tuning across 40 nm (signal) and 66 nm (idler) using transversely chirped volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) acting on the signal wave. The maximum total average output power (signal + idler) achieved with a narrowband VBG has reached 11.35 W at 20 kHz, corresponding to a conversion efficiency of 63%. In this case, the signal and idler bandwidths amount to 0.7 and 0.9 nm at ~1922 and ~2384 nm, respectively. The experimentally observed spectral narrowing is reproduced by numerical simulations based on a split-step method within the plane-wave approximation taking account pump depletion and back-conversion. Spatial effects are also incorporated in the model, taking into account the transversal intensity distributions, in order to better reproduce the input-output power characteristics.