NEAR-INFRARED PULSED OPTICAL PARAMETRIC OSCILLATION IN N-(4-NITROPHENYL)-L-PROLINOL AT THE 1-NS TIME-SCALE

Tunable near-infrared optical parametric oscillation in an organic crystal has been achieved for the first time to our knowledge. A 1.9-mm-thick nonlinear molecular crystal of N-(4-nitrophenyl)-L-prolinol was pumped at a wavelength of 0.5927 mum and a pulse duration of 1 ns (FWHM). Tunability from 0.9 to 1.7 mum and a maximum but nonoptimized total conversion efficiency of approximately 5% were obtained with considerable improvement in performance still available. In addition, the optical parametric oscillation threshold estimation and the importance of a high nonlinearity for optical parametric oscillation operation at the 1-ns time scale are discussed.