Near-infrared pulsed optical parametric oscillation in N-(4-nitrophenyl)-l-prolinol at the 1-ns time scale

Tunable near-infrared optical parametric oscillation in an organic crystal has been achieved for the first time to our knowledge. A 1.9-mm-thick nonlinear molecular crystal of N-(4-nitrophenyl)-l-prolinol was pumped at a wavelength of 0.5927 μm and a pulse duration of 1 ns (FWHM). Tunability from 0.9 to 1.7 μm and a maximum but nonoptimized total conversion efficiency of ~5% were obtained with considerable improvement in performance still available. In addition, the optical parametric oscillation threshold estimation method and the importance of a high nonlinearity for optical parametric oscillation operation at the 1-ns time scale are discussed.