Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) producing longwave output from a much shorter pump wavelength suffer from
low conversion efficiency into the idler due to the large quantum defect compared with similar devices operating in the 3
– 5 μm regime. One method to increase pump to idler conversion efficiency is to recycle the undesired and higher energy
signal photons into additional idler photons in a second nonlinear stage. We present numerical simulation results
showing the improvement in efficiency that can be obtained in a linear, two stage, cascaded orientation patterned gallium
arsenide (OPGaAs) nanosecond OPO. It includes diffraction, crystal loss, phase mismatch, pump depletion, and back
conversion; and it assumes monochromatic waves but it neglects group velocity dispersion. For a singly resonant
oscillator (SRO) pumped by a 2.054 μm Tm:Ho,YLF laser with 45 ns pulse widths, the addition of the second crystal in
the cavity increases idler generation by overall factor of two and exceeds the quantum defect limit. The model has been
validated by comparison with SNLO for the case of a single-stage OPO, and suggests crystal and resonator parameters
that will lead to an optimized cascaded OPO.
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