Patent ID: 6647033
Filing Date: 2003-11-11
Classification: G02F,H01S

Abstract:
An optical parametric oscillator, comprising:an optical pump, which generates a pump beam at a pump frequency greater than a signal frequency of a signal wave; a nonlinear optical medium oriented so that the signal wave at the signal frequency and a corresponding idler wave are produced when the pump beam propagates through the nonlinear optical medium, resulting in beam walk off, said beam walk off induced by means selected from birefringence from said nonlinear optical medium and pump beam tilt relative to the signal wave, said signal wave and said idler wave having nonparallel Poynting vectors in said nonlinear optical medium; and an optical cavity in a ring configuration which directs said signal wave to repeatedly pass through the nonlinear optical medium, said optical cavity comprising three mirrors and a Dove prism, with waveplates before and after said Dove prism, said Dove prism rotated relative to the ring plane to produce image rotation on each pass of the pump beam through the nonlinear optical medium.