A new paper published in the Laser Physics journal was published in collaboration of the HiLASE Centre and the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. It is titled High power single crystal KTA optical parametric amplifier for efficient 1.4–3.5 µm mid-IR radiation generation.
The team of authors includes HiLASIANS Bianka Csanaková, Ondřej Novák (Deputy head of Advanced Laser Development, Team leader of Nonlinear optics), Lukáš Roškot, Jiří Mužík (Team leader of Thin disk lasers and Postdoctoral fellow: PERLA C), Martin Smrž (head of Advanced Laser Development), and Tomáš Mocek (Head of HiLASE Centre). They were joined by Helena Jelínková from Czech Technical University in Prague.
In this paper, we present a single crystal, KTA (potassium titanyl-arsenate, KTiOAsO4) based picosecond optical parametric amplifier pumped by an in-house built 1030 nm Yb:YAG thin-disk laser, capable of tunability from 1.46 to 3.5 µm, operating at 90 kHz, with high average power in the signal and idler beams. The highest output power of 8.9 W was reached for the 1750 nm signal beam with 19% conversion efficiency and the respective 2500 nm idler beam power was 6.2 W with 13% efficiency. The highest combined signal and idler mid-infrared power was 17 W at the 2060 nm wavelength degeneracy point.