NIR and MIR tunable 130 fs Supercontinuum-Seeded OPA with 25 nJ pulse energy and 5 MHz repetition rate

Modern applications of ultrafast lasers often require a laser source which is tunable over a spectral region by far exceeding the gain bandwidth of any laser medium. The near-infrared and mid-infrared region are of high interest for a variety of applications in physics, chemistry, and biology [1]. Recently chirped pulse oscillators (CPO) have been demonstrated [2] to fill the gap between the oscillator and the amplifier regime. However, the rep-rates of 5 MHz require a difficult to handle OPO cavity length, and the pulse energy is too small for a standard bulk-crystal, e.g. BBO, based OPA setup. This paper reports on an alternative novel OPA approach for high pulse energy and low rep-rate oscillators using a chirped periodically poled Lithium Niobate (PPLN) and supercontinuum (SC) generated in a YAG crystal for seeding.