High power mid-infrared continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator pumped by fiber lasers

3~5μm mid-infrared laser has many important applications, such as gas detection, spectral analysis, remote sensing, medical treatment, and also in the military laser radar, infrared countermine, and so on. Optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is an efficient way to generate laser in this wavelength range, which has attracted the eyes of many people. In this paper, the recent development of mid-infrared OPO is overviewed. Meanwhile, detailed introduction on our recent work is given. Maximum idler output power of 34.2W at center wavelength of 3.35μm was obtained, to our knowledge, which is the new power record of the international public reporting for the continue-wave (CW) mid-infrared OPO. It is worth mentioning that the pump source, the quasi single-frequency (SF) narrow line width fiber laser, was also developed by our groups. According to the current status of research, some solutions is proposed in order to achieve higher power, narrower line width, and compact volume mid-infrared OPO in a wide tunable range.