Diffractive effects in singly-resonant continuous-wave parametric oscillators

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed numerical study of the effect of focusing on the conversion efficiency of low-loss singly-resonant parametric oscillators with collinear focusing of pump and signal. Results are given for the maximal pump depletion and for pump power levels required for various amounts of depletion, as functions of pump and signal confocal parameters, for kI/kP=0.33 and 0.50. It is found that the ratio of pump depletion to maximal depletion as a function of the ratio of pump power to threshold power agrees with the plane-wave prediction to within 5%, for a wide range of focusing conditions. The observed trends are explained as resulting from intensity and phase dependent mechanisms.