Abstract

The last decade has witnessed remarkable advances in the development of ultrafast laser technology. There are few cw subpicosecond sources, however, with the versatility to tune over broad spectral regions. Systems based on continuum generation, for example, typically operate at a repetition rate many orders of magnitude below that of a normal CPM laser. Recently, several groups have reported picosecond^1–3 and subpicosecond⁴ optical parametric oscillators (OPOs), although only one group³ has obtained true cw operation producing picosecond outputs within a limited tuning range.

© 1991 Optical Society of America