A laser architecture for selectively producing short high-energy laser pulses having octave-spanning, continuous tunability. Two oppositely chirped pulses are used in combination with a pair of tunable pulse stretcher/compressors to produce a short, high-energy, tunable, broadband pulse.

A configuration of an excitation light generation device for providing an excitation light having a good SN ratio to a PSA is disclosed. Further, a configuration of a relay amplifier of the PSA including the excitation light generation device is also shown. The following disclosure includes the excitation light generation device, an optical amplification device including the excitation light generation device, and an optical transmission system. More specifically, the excitation light generation device for maintaining the SN ratio of the excitation light in a high state by utilizing an optical sensitive amplification function with respect to the excitation light generated by an optical phase lock loop is disclosed. The excitation light generation device of the present disclosure generates a local oscillation excitation light using the OPLL and having a sufficiently high SN ratio, which makes an inherent low noise operation of the PSA possible even to a signal light having a high SN ratio.

The invention is an optical parametric oscillator or amplifier employing a zig-zag beam path, configured using dichroic mirrors or optical surfaces on the side-walls of a solid-state, liquid, or gaseous nonlinear medium, to control conversion efficiency, beam quality, or other aspects of the nonlinear conversion process by dumping unwanted radiation, the oscillator/amplifier for use with any nonlinear process in which it is advantageous to have one or more of interacting coherent beams be partially or fully transmitted at reflection points of the zig-zag path.

Disclosed are ideas to produce an add-on device which turns widely used high repetition rate lasers used for 2-photon microscopy into a light source which can be used for 3-photon microscopy. The add-on encompasses a device to reduce the pulse repetition rate of the high repetition rate (>50 MHz) laser source (laser or OPO) to less than 10 MHz which allows for higher pulse energies while maintaining reasonable average powers. If the high repetition sources operate below 1250 nm the add-on shifts or broadens the seed light to cover 1.3 μm to 1.8 μm before amplification. If the high repetition rate source operates at or around 1.3 μm the add-on only needs to amplify the pulse after downshifting the repetition rate. In another implementation the add-on shifts or broadens the 1.3 μm light to cover the spectral range out to 1.8 μm before amplification.

An optical parametric oscillator and method for generating coherent signal light involve a resonant optical cavity for coherent signal light, and in the cavity a non-parametric gain element for amplifying the coherent signal light to only partially compensate for passive optical roundtrip losses, thereby obtaining lower effective roundtrip losses. A parametric gain element is arranged in the cavity, for converting coherent pump light into coherent signal light through an instantaneous nonlinear optical interaction. The parametric oscillator has means for adjusting an intracavity optical power of the coherent pump light above a threshold value, where the parametric gain is balancing the effective roundtrip losses, thus inducing sustained oscillations of the signal light in the optical cavity. The non-parametric gain element is configured to have a limited non-parametric gain over a gain bandwidth of the parametric gain element, which is less than the passive optical roundtrip losses in the gain bandwidth.

A radially polarized optical parametric amplifier insensitive to polarization is provided by the present invention, which comprises a laser module and a nonlinear crystal satisfying the type-II phase matching or the type-II quasi-phase matching condition, wherein the laser module is configured to generate two laser beams, namely the pump light and the signal light with an arbitrary polarization state, the wavelengths of the pump light and the signal light are degenerate or nearly degenerate; and the nonlinear crystal is provided in the emergent beamline of the laser module to perform optical parametric amplification of the signal light by using the pump light.

A chip-scale mode-locked laser including a cavity including a gain medium for amplifying signal electromagnetic radiation (signal) through stimulated emission, the signal comprising a signal wavelength; and a passive or active mode-locking device to enforce pulse formation in the laser. The mode-locking device includes a thin-film waveguide having a thickness on the order of the signal wavelength so as to confine and guide the signal along the thin-film waveguide, and a material comprising a second-order nonlinear susceptibility to enable active or passive mode-locking of the signal. The mode-locking device leads to generation of pulses of the signal outputted from the mode-locked laser.

An infrared non-linear optical crystal has the following molecular formula: A.sub.18X.sub.21Y.sub.6M.sub.48, in which A is Ba, Sr or Pb; X is Zn, Cd or Mn; Y is Ga, In or Al; and M is S, Se or Te. The crystal belongs to trigonal system and has space group R3. The crystal Ba.sub.18Zn.sub.21Ga.sub.6S.sub.48 is a type I phase matching non-linear optical material, in a particle size range of 150˜210 μm, its powder frequency doubling intensity and the laser damage threshold are respectively 0.5 times and 28 times those of the commercial material AgGaS.sub.2. Other crystals have the same or similar structure and properties such as optical property. The infrared non-linear optical crystal of the present application has important prospects in military and civilian applications, and can be used in electro-optical countermeasures, resource detection, space antimissile and communications, etc.

An optical parametric oscillator (OPO) including a thin film waveguide including a material having a second order nonlinear susceptibility generating an electromagnetic wave in response to pump electromagnetic wave inputted into the thin film waveguide. The electromagnetic wave has a first wavelength or first set of wavelengths longer than a second wavelength or second set of wavelengths of the pump electromagnetic wave. The thin film waveguide has a thickness on the order of the first wavelength or the first set of wavelengths in the thin film waveguide so as to guide the output electromagnetic wave along the thin film waveguide.

A low-repetition-rate (10-Hz), picosecond (ps) optical parametric generator (OPG) system produces higher energy output levels in a more robust and reliable system than previously available. A picosecond OPG stage is seeded at an idler wavelength with a high-power diode laser and its output at ˜566 nm is amplified in a pulsed dye amplifier (PDA) stage having two dye cells, resulting in signal enhancement by more than three orders of magnitude. The nearly transform-limited beam at ˜566 nm has a pulse width of ˜170 ps with an overall output of ˜2.3 mJ/pulse. A spatial filter between the OPG and PDA stages and a pinhole between the two dye cells improve high output beam quality and enhances coarse and fine wavelength tuning capability.