The design and the operating characteristics of a high-repetition-rate, singly resonant picosecond optical parametric oscillator based on temperature-tuned LiB₃O₅ and synchronously pumped by a self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser at 81 MHz are described. It is shown that LiB₃O₅ is an excellent nonlinear material candidate for parametric generation of ultrashort pulses because of its broad tunability, small spatial and temporal walk-off, wide acceptance bandwidths, and low dispersion. With a 30-mm-long LiB₃O₅ crystal cut for noncritical type-I phase matching, average output powers of as much as 325 mW have been obtained at 1.8 times the 650-mW threshold. We demonstrate continuous tuning from 1.15 to 2.26 μm with a single crystal, limited by the tunability of the Ti:sapphire pump laser. For 1.8-ps input pump pulses, transform-limited signal pulses with durations of 1–1.2 ps and idler pulses with durations of 2–2.2 ps have been generated over 1.2–2.2 μm without requiring dispersion compensation.

© 1995 Optical Society of America

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