They are commerially available, see e.g. at Innolas, our research partner:
http://www.innolas-laser.com/Products/OPOs/Diode-Pumped-OPOs.html
Dreher, Wikipedia is a good point to start. But in this page, I could't find diode pumped OPA. So could you point out the accurate place?
Dear Heise, that's a good job and I am very interest in that. And I am trying to find their corresponding paper to know more details.
@Xiaoyang
- Not mentionning a specific type of laser does not rule out diode lasers.
- 'Point to start'! Did you already try to get the 1st reference given? Title: "A picosecond optical parametric oscillator with amplification of the tunable semiconductor laser radiation".
Unfortunately the references on this page suffer from unsufficient formatting - but they are identifiable.
I am afraid Inoolas does not publish. Its more or less their IP how to manufacture it.
Try to find papers from Professor Zinth at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
@ Dreher. My question is diode pumped OPA, not OPO. OPO has a cavity. OPA doesn't have cavity. Typically OPA needs more pump intensity than OPO. Anyway, OPO is close to OPA and that's a good start. Thank you for your information.
@Gerhard Heise, I send a email to Innolas company's engineer. His reply is that their Diode pumped OPO is not diode directly pumped OPO. It is a diode pumped Nd:YAG combined with an OPO all in one monolithic housing.
I found a paper, M.E.Klein et. al, "Diode-pumped singly resonant continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator with wide continuous tuning of the near-infrared idler wave," This is a diode directly pumped OPO.
Anyway, Thank you for your information.
Yes, you can use diode laser as pump source for optical parametric amplification.
Hello, question is about laser diode pumped OPA. Not about OPA pumped by laser which is pumped by laser diode. Similarly like about nuclear power powered car - is electromobile powered by nuclear power because it is charged from the mains grid?
Probably you need to look for fiber parametric amplifiers working on third order nonlinearity.
By the way - OPO and OPA are not the same :) and are not always interchangeable. OPO - nothing is seeded and everything what appears is parametric generation. OPA - seed signal is present and "idler" appears. However you need to distinguish idler is result of parametric amplification or difference frequency generation (no parametric amplification).
Gintaras
@Gintaras Tamosauskas
Thank you for your answer.
I don't know fiber parametric amplifiers and I will read some papers about that. Maybe it will be helpful.
@Than Singh Saini
I try my best and I don't find any paper about diode laser directly pumped OPA.
My question is diode directly pumped OPA, not diode pumped laser pumped OPA.
Could you explain in more detail?
Hello,
I am working with parametric amplifiers long time but I am not specialized in ones pumped by low power (low intensity) sources. But I believe there might be no such amplifiers because of insufficient intensity obtainable directly from semiconductor lasers.
I believe that amplifiers or better say oscillators with cavity may work. The reason for that is very low parametric gain which should overcome losses in the cavity which may be as low as 1e-4 for roundtrip. Oscillator will work. However the amplifier with the gain of 1e-4 is meaningless. Even more, as I mentioned previously, appearance of radiation at idler wavelength does not mean parametric amplification is obtained. The process may be difference frequency generation which is similar to second harmonic generation - threshold-less three-wave interaction process where difference frequency radiation is linearly proportional to the power of the pump or the seed separately. Spontaneous parametric down conversion should be also mentioned which is scattering process. Parametric amplification assume exponential grows of the signal and idler. It may happen that CW sources simply cannot achieve intensity needed for exponential signal growth. But you should not take my words as only true - investigation of publications (in journals like Phys.Rev.Lett., Optics Letters) or other highly cited journals is needed.
Talking about the fiber amplifiers there are big advances because of extremely long nonlinear media. The length may overcome troubles because by very low third order nonlinearity. Even more, pump do not diverge like in bulk crystals and for long pulse or CW case intensity in the fiber remains almost constant for hundreds meters. As I know Raman scattering is main limiting factor which convers pump to some other radiation and intensity needed for parametric amplification is lost. Raman fiber amplifiers are quite popular.
Gintaras
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