Development of a broadly-tunable continuous-wave, mode-hop-tuned, PPLN OPO for chemical sensing application

Summary form only given. The use of periodically-poled lithium niobate (PPLN) in spectroscopy and chemical sensing offers many potential advantages over traditional laser based systems. Many chemical sensing applications require broad tunability, high power and single-longitudinal-mode (SLM) operation. While PPLN based sources offer many of these attributes there are currently few in use. We have developed a broadly tunable, SLM optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on PPLN for use in a photoacoustic spectrometer. The development of a broadly tunable cw OPO is a difficult task and there are many subtleties and differences from more traditional tunable laser sources.