Chirped-pulse optical parametric oscillators

We demonstrated that by introducing an extra optical material with a high nonlinear refractive index into a conventional optical parametric oscillator (OPO) cavity and managing the intra-cavity dispersion, a chirped-pulse OPO (CPOPO) can be constructed, generating optical pulses with an instantaneous bandwidth much wider than the pump bandwidth. Experimentally, from a CPOPO pumped by a Yb-fiber laser system centered at 1058 nm with a pulse duration of 230 fs and a -20 dB bandwidth of 8.7 THz, we obtained a signal wave with a -20 dB bandwidth of 28.4 THz and an idler wave covering 2900-3960 nm with a -20 dB bandwidth of 27.7 THz.