Feature
Second harmonic generation in periodically-poled LiNbO3
Compact, solid-state sources of coherent blue light have applications in biomedicine, displays, printing, and optical storage. Because blue semiconductor diode lasers are not currently available, techniques for the efficient nonlinear optical frequency conversion of infrared diode lasers are being developed. Materials with high nonlinearity and good optical quality are therefore in demand. Engineering the optical properties of a well-studied material such as lithium niobate (LiNbO3 ) provides an alternative to the search for entirely new materials. Using quasiphase- matching in LiNbO3 , we have accomplished collinear cw second harmonic generation (SHG) with wavelengths and nonlinear coefficients that have been impossible to phase-match using only the material birefringence.
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