| In the past 40 years or so, scientists were thrilled to implement the “light fantastic” phenomena in their experiments. Not only they were able to produce coherent light sources, but they could also tune the wavelength of these sources. Optical Parametric Oscillators were among the sources that were investigated to increase the tuning ranges for coherent sources. In this dissertation a description of continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator in periodically-poled LiNbO3 crystal is given. The theory of operation for this oscillator is provided therein. The second order nonlinear coefficient that plays a major role in parametric oscillation is d33 coefficient of LiNbO3. We have determined an effective value for this coefficient through frequency mixing process using two different laser systems. The efficiency of the optical parametric oscillator is analyzed for the case of undepleted pump power and the case of depleted pump power. We used a multi-grating LiNbO3 crystal with periods ranging from 28.5 μm to 29.7 μm. By using this crystal we were able to tune the oscillator continuously from 3.18 μm to 3.98 μm (idler) and from 1.45 μm to 1.59 μm (signal). An original spectrum analysis in the visible region of this oscillator along with the tuning ranges for each wave length is presented. |
