Ti:sapphire-pumped deep-infrared femtosecond optical parametric oscillator based on CdSiP_2

Abstract

We report on a femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) for the deep-infrared (deep-IR) based on the Kerr-lens-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser as the pump source. By deploying a novel cascaded intracavity arrangement, comprising a femtosecond OPO based on the nonlinear crystal, CdSiP2, synchronously pumped internal to a MgO:PPLN femtosecond OPO, we have generated broadly tunable radiation across 5958-8117 nm using rapid static cavity delay tuning, with a maximum power of 64 μW at 6791 nm, limited by the absorption in mirror substrates as well as polarization-dependent intracavity losses. The deep-IR idler power exhibits excellent passive stability of better than 1.1% rms over 2 h, with a spectral bandwidth as large as ∼650 nm at ∼6800 nm. The demonstrated concept is generic and can be similarly deployed in other operating time scales and wavelength regions, also using different laser pump sources and nonlinear materials.