Wavelength-tunable high-power picosecond pulses from a fibre pumped diode-seeded high-gain parametric amplifier

• Main Authors: Britton, P.E (Author), Broderick, N.G.R (Author), Richardson, D.J (Author), Smith, P.G.R (Author), Ross, G.W (Author), Hanna, D.C (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 1998-10-15.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We describe a high-gain optical parametric amplifier (OPA) and optical parametric generator (OPG) system pumped by a fiber chirped-pulse amplification source based on novel large-mode-area fiber components. 45nJ OPG thresholds and 34% pump-signal conversion efficiencies are obtained for ~4ps pulses. OPA gains in excess of 75dB and pump-signal conversion efficiencies of ~39% (external) are demonstrated. Furthermore, we show that injection seeding of such high-gain parametric devices by use of a low-power continuous-wave beam results in high-power (>18kW) picosecond pulses with a time-bandwidth produce of ~0.65. some ten times less than from a free-running OPG. Using such an approach, we obtain 2.7ps 50nJ pulses at 1.310µm.