Dither-free stabilization of a femtosecond doubly-resonant OPO using parasitic sum-frequency mixing

Yuk Shan Cheng; Richard Alexander McCracken; Derryck Telford Reid

doi:10.1364/OL.45.000768

Dither-free stabilization of a femtosecond doubly-resonant OPO using parasitic sum-frequency mixing

Yuk Shan Cheng, Richard Alexander McCracken, Derryck Telford Reid

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Abstract

Stable operation of a doubly-resonant femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) requires sub-micron matching of the OPO and pump-laser cavity lengths, which is normally implemented using a dither-locking feedback scheme. Here we show that parasitic sum-frequency-mixing between the pump and resonant pulses of a degenerate femtosecond OPO provides an error signal suitable for actuating the cavity length with the precision needed to maintain oscillation on a single fringe and at maximum output power. Unlike commonly used dither-locking approaches, the method introduces no modulation noise and requires no additional optical components, except for one narrowband filter. The scheme is demonstrated on a Ti:sapphire-pumped sub-40-fs PPKTP OPO, from which data are presented showing a tenfold reduction in relative intensity noise compared with dither locking.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	768-771
Number of pages	4
Journal	Optics Letters
Volume	45
Issue number	3
Early online date	12 Nov 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.45.000768
Publication status	Published - 1 Feb 2020

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10.1364/OL.45.000768Licence: CC BY

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title = "Dither-free stabilization of a femtosecond doubly-resonant OPO using parasitic sum-frequency mixing",

abstract = "Stable operation of a doubly-resonant femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) requires sub-micron matching of the OPO and pump-laser cavity lengths, which is normally implemented using a dither-locking feedback scheme. Here we show that parasitic sum-frequency-mixing between the pump and resonant pulses of a degenerate femtosecond OPO provides an error signal suitable for actuating the cavity length with the precision needed to maintain oscillation on a single fringe and at maximum output power. Unlike commonly used dither-locking approaches, the method introduces no modulation noise and requires no additional optical components, except for one narrowband filter. The scheme is demonstrated on a Ti:sapphire-pumped sub-40-fs PPKTP OPO, from which data are presented showing a tenfold reduction in relative intensity noise compared with dither locking.",

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AU - McCracken, Richard Alexander

AU - Reid, Derryck Telford

PY - 2020/2/1

Y1 - 2020/2/1

N2 - Stable operation of a doubly-resonant femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) requires sub-micron matching of the OPO and pump-laser cavity lengths, which is normally implemented using a dither-locking feedback scheme. Here we show that parasitic sum-frequency-mixing between the pump and resonant pulses of a degenerate femtosecond OPO provides an error signal suitable for actuating the cavity length with the precision needed to maintain oscillation on a single fringe and at maximum output power. Unlike commonly used dither-locking approaches, the method introduces no modulation noise and requires no additional optical components, except for one narrowband filter. The scheme is demonstrated on a Ti:sapphire-pumped sub-40-fs PPKTP OPO, from which data are presented showing a tenfold reduction in relative intensity noise compared with dither locking.

AB - Stable operation of a doubly-resonant femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) requires sub-micron matching of the OPO and pump-laser cavity lengths, which is normally implemented using a dither-locking feedback scheme. Here we show that parasitic sum-frequency-mixing between the pump and resonant pulses of a degenerate femtosecond OPO provides an error signal suitable for actuating the cavity length with the precision needed to maintain oscillation on a single fringe and at maximum output power. Unlike commonly used dither-locking approaches, the method introduces no modulation noise and requires no additional optical components, except for one narrowband filter. The scheme is demonstrated on a Ti:sapphire-pumped sub-40-fs PPKTP OPO, from which data are presented showing a tenfold reduction in relative intensity noise compared with dither locking.

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DO - 10.1364/OL.45.000768

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SP - 768

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JO - Optics Letters

JF - Optics Letters

IS - 3

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Dither-free stabilization of a femtosecond doubly-resonant OPO using parasitic sum-frequency mixing

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