Xiang ZHANG, Chunhua WANG, Zhibin YE, Yunxuan QI, Chong LIU^*, Zhen XIANG, and Jianhong GE

State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P. R. China

(Received April 2, 2014; Accepted August 1, 2014)

Idler wave absorption is important in optical parametric oscillators (OPOs). We show through both numerical simulation and experiment that proper idler wave absorption coefficient could make OPOs perform better in conversion efficiency. If the coefficient becomes larger or smaller than the proper value, the conversion efficiency would be lower. A periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) OPO is set to verify the numerical results. Moreover, different pump power is used in the experiment research. It shows that the proper value is changing with the pump power. It shows that idler wave absorption should be considered comprehensively with pump wave power in efficiency OPO designing.

Key words: parametric oscillator, nonlinear optics, idler wave absorption

^*E-mail address: chongliu@zju.edu.cn