title: Thermal waveguide OPO.
abstract: We report a mid-infrared, CW singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (OPO) with a thermally induced waveguide in its gain crystal. We measured a numerical aperture of 0.0062 for the waveguide at 80-W intracavity power at 3.2 microm. This thermal-guiding effect benefits to the stable operation of an OPO and improves the parametric conversion efficiency by more than a factor of two when compared with that without thermal guiding.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Photonics Technologies, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Tsing-hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: S T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Y Y
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: T D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D009991:Oscillometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013696:Temperature; D014159:Transducers