Bulk PPKTP by crystal growth from high temperature solution

International audiencePeriodically-poled ferroelectric crystals show unprecedented efficiency and properties otherwise impossible to obtain. Unfortunately, the sample thickness obtainable today limits their use to low and moderate power application. With the aim of increasing the size of periodically domain-structured crystals with a controlled and regular grating period, we proposed an epitaxial growth process using seeds made of thin plates domain engineered by electric field poling. We demonstrated this process with the ferroelectric crystal KTiOPO4 (KTP) which is one of the most promising candidate materials for that purpose. The poling step requires a sample exhibiting (001) and (00 (1) over bar) faces, so that the growth step has to be performed onto these faces. This constraint is a difficulty to circumvent as these faces are not present in the standard equilibrium morphology. It is then necessary to find the growth conditions enabling to work below the roughening temperature of these faces. By using a high temperature solution method, the so-called "flux method", and by choosing an appropriate chemical composition of the flux solution, we obtained periodically domain-structured KTP layers with thicknesses up to 800 mu m and regular periodicity onto (001) and (00 (1) over bar) faces of the initial PPKTP seeds

Template-growth of periodically domain-structured KTiOPO4

International audienceWe performed the first growth, from a high temperature solution, of a 38.86 μm-periodicity PPKTP crystal of good optical quality over a thickness of more than 800 μm onto each of the two faces perpendicular to the c direction of a PPKTP substrate previously obtained by electric field poling. The quasi-phase matched second harmonic generation properties in the grown layer and substrate are similar and in accordance with calculation

Polychromatic guide star: feasibility study

International audienceAdaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the visible wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereinafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return-of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because $APEX 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial sky coverage for the tilt. The only one providing us with a full sky coverage is the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D; program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play. We finally shortly described the effort in Europe to develop the LGS

Polychromatic guide star: feasibility study

International audienceAdaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the visible wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereinafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return-of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because $APEX 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial sky coverage for the tilt. The only one providing us with a full sky coverage is the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D; program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play. We finally shortly described the effort in Europe to develop the LGS

Recent studies on new nonlinear crystals generating mid-infrared parametric light

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Crystal parametric nonlinear optics for the generation in the mid-infrared

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Generation of Parametric Light: from the study of crystals to the implementation of devices

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Etude des distributions angulaires d'absorption et d'autodoublage de fréquence du cristal biaxe monoclinique YCa4O(BO3)3 dopé avec des ions Nd(3+)

Ce travail de thèse concerne de nouveaux développements fondamentaux en optique cristalline linéaire et non linéaire des milieux biaxes grâce à une cristal modèle, le monoclinique Ca4YO(BO3)3 dopé Nd3+ et usiné en forme de sphère. Il s agit de l étude de la distribution angulaire de l'absorption, d une part, dans le plan miroir de YCOB : Nd, où il est montré, que dans un cristal monoclinique ou triclinique, l'angle entre le repère d'absorption et le repère diélectrique dépend fortement de la transition électronique considérée. D autre part, dans toutes directions de YCOB : Nd, il est montré, que pour les cristaux orthorhombiques, monocliniques ou tricliniques, il existe un continuum de directions pour lesquelles l'absorption ne dépend pas de la polarisation. Enfin, nous présentons une méthode, basée sur le cristal sphérique YCOB : Nd placé entre deux miroirs, qui permet de mesurer directement toutes les directions d'accord de phase d'autodoublage de fréquence.The work reported in this thesis is devoted to new fundamental developments in linear and non linea crystal optics in biaxial crystals, based, as an example, on the study of the monoclinic Ca4 YO(B03) crystal doped with Nd3+ ions and shaped as a sphere. The study of the angular distribution of the absorption coefficient is reported, first in the mirror plane of Nd:YCOB, showing that in a monoclinic or , triclinic crystal the angle between the absorption frame and the dielectric frame strongly depends on thl involved electronic transition. Secondly, in ail directions of Nd:YCOB it is shown that in orthorhombic monoclinic or triclinic crystals, there is a continuum of directions of propagation for which the absorptiol is polarization independent. Finally, we report a method, based on a Nd:YCOB crystal sphere insertel between two plane mirrors, leading to the direct measurement of ail phase-matching directions for self doubling frequency conversion.GRENOBLE1-BU Sciences (384212103) / SudocSudocFranceF

A new tool for the characterization of self-doubling crystals

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