Design of optical superlattice to realize third-harmonic generation and multi-wavelength laser output and its application in the all-solid state laser

Abstract

The design of a special type of optical superlattice and its application in the all-solid state laser is involved in this invention. Nd ions doped laser crystal in common use can radiate three relatively intense spectral lines when excited: the first wavelength is around 900 nm; the second wavelength is around 1064 nm; the third wavelength is around 1300 nm, whose accurate wavelength are depended on their host crystal (for example, to Nd:YAG, they are 946 nm, 1064 nm and 1319 nm, respectively). On the other hand, for LiNbO3 (LN), LiTaO3 (LT), KTP and other ferroelectric crystals, the positive and negative 180° ferroelectric domains in these crystals can be arranged orderly according to certain sequence via crystal growth, electric field poling, and other state-of-the-art domain reversion technique, forming superlattice that is applicable to quasi-phase-matching (QPM) laser frequency conversion. This invention aims at the design of optical superlattice that can realize third-harmonic generation and coupled parametric process for such three emitting lines of Nd doped crystals and its application in the all-solid state laser. Such a superlattice, which can provide two or more effective reciprocal vectors, can participate in two or more QPM optical parametric processes. Different optical parametric processes in this kind of superlattice can couple each other via cascade effect. Therefore this type of superlattice can be used as an especial frequency-conversion crystal to acquire high-order harmonic generation of laser; in addition, it can realize the simultaneous output of multicolor laser or make the output of laser tunable by quasi-phase-matched frequency down-conversion. For instance, it is applicable to the frequency-conversion devices of all-solid state blue or ultraviolet laser, red-blue or green-ultraviolet dual color laser, and red-green-blue three fundamental colors laser, and can also be used as the source of entangled photon pair in the quantum telecommunication. The scheme can be extended to other active ions (such as Er, Yb, Tm, Sm etc.) doped laser crystal comprised in an all solid-state laser system.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.