| This thesis involves the development of an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on the newly-discovered material beta-barium metaborate ({dollar}beta{dollar}-BaB{dollar}sb2{dollar}O{dollar}sb4{dollar}, BBO). This work takes the BBO OPO from being a promising idea to a device that is of experimental utility.; The OPO, first demonstrated 25 years ago, holds great promise as an efficient, broadly-tunable source of coherent radiation; however, it has failed to come into common use because of a lack of suitable nonlinear optical materials. The optical properties of BBO make it the leading candidate for use in an OPO capable of producing continuously-tunable coherent radiation throughout the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared regions of the spectrum. The steps necessary in the development of a material for OPO applications are: (1) crystal growth, (2) optical characterization, (3) OPO cavity design, and (4) OPO device characterization. These four steps comprise the bulk of the work described in this thesis.; The growth experiments, based on the Top-Seeded-Solution-Growth technique, have produced large, transparent, single-crystal boules (60 mm diameter x 18 mm thick), from which OPO crystals as large as 12 x 6 mm{dollar}sp2{dollar} x 20.5 mm long have been fabricated. The optical characterization of BBO has yielded a transparency region of 0.19-2.5 {dollar}mu{dollar}m, a birefringence of 0.11, a nonlinear coefficient of 2.2 pm/V, and bulk optical damage thresholds of 20-50 GW/cm{dollar}sp2{dollar} for the four parameters most vital to reliable OPO operation. Three new OPO cavity designs are described, all of which significantly improve OPO performance. These designs are generally applicable to other nonlinear optical materials and other three-wave-mixing processes.; The OPO device characterization experiments are the fruition of all previous work. Pumping with the harmonics of a Nd:YAG laser, BBO OPO devices are demonstrated to generate continuously tunable radiation over 0.33-2.5 {dollar}mu{dollar}m, with experimentally-usable conversion efficiencies as high as 32%, and spectral linewidths as narrow as 0.3 A. The excellent performance of this device should bring it into common use in a variety of applications. |
