Nonlinear Optics

Optical Parametric Oscillators (OPOs) and SHG Units (Frequency Couplers)

Modelocked solid state lasers like Ti:Sapphire and others with a wavelength range limited to NIR are the standard systems for generating ultrafast ps and fs pulses. Using nonlinear optical effects is a means to transform this wavelength range, which isn’t sufficient for a lot of applications. The APE OPOs and SHG units are purely solid state systems. They can be directly operated with the laser oscillators without additional amplifiers. Typical applications:

- time resolved flourescence measurement, e.g. time correlated single photon counting
- single molecule spectroscopy
- pump-probe-experiments
- MPE

Our new OPO version with periodically poled crystals is pumped with a fixed wavelength, i.e. the output wavelength can be adjusted independently of the pump wavelength. Therefore these systems are ideally suited for spectroscopy. As the parametric process is jitter free the OPO is ideally suited for two colour experiments like CARS. In the case of applications that ask for reduced pulse repetition rates, APE offers a pulse picker and a cavity dumper.