Singly-resonant continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator pumped by a diode laser

Summary form only given. Singly-resonant continuous-wave (CW) optical parametric oscillators (SROs) have favourable properties in respect to power stability and wavelength tunability. A disadvantage is, however, the high pump power at threshold. The operation of singly resonant CW OPOs thus requires multiwatt laser radiation in a beam of good spectral and spatial quality. For this reason the CW SROs reported so far used high power solid-state lasers as pump sources. In the paper we present, to our knowledge, the first singly-resonant CW OPO which is directly pumped by a high power diode laser. The OPO is based on periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN).