title: Narrow-bandwidth tunable picosecond pulses in the visible produced by noncollinear optical parametric amplification with a chirped blue pump.
abstract: Narrow-bandwidth (approximately 27 cm(-1)) tunable picosecond pulses from 480 nm-780 nm were generated from the output of a 1 kHz femtosecond titanium:sapphire laser system using a type I noncollinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) with chirped second-harmonic generation (SHG) pumping. Unlike a femtosecond NOPA, this system utilizes a broadband pump beam, the chirped 400 nm SHG of the Ti:sapphire fundamental, to amplify a monochromatic signal beam (spectrally-filtered output of a type II collinear OPA). Optimum geometric conditions for simultaneous phase- and group-velocity matching were calculated in the visible spectrum. This design is an efficient and simple method for generating tunable visible picosecond pulses that are synchronized to the femtosecond pulses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research (ANSER) Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Dick T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Co
authors.forename: Jenny V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Lockard
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: McCamant
authors.forename: Michael R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Wasielewski