Regenerative amplification of a single-frequency optical parametric oscillator

High-resolution high-energy near-diffraction-limited pulses are obtained by regenerative amplification in Ti:sapphire of a pulsed single-frequency optical parametric oscillator. The technique combines the virtues of tunable solid-state lasers and low-jitter parametric oscillators to yield ~2-ns pulses that can be rapidly tuned through the entire gain range of the Ti:sapphire crystal. The measured peak power is 20 MW at 850 nm.