Supply of Tunable Optical Parametric Oscillator to National Physical Laboratory

About

National Physical Laboratory awarded a contract to Coherent Europe B.V.

for the supply of a laser source continuously tunable over the 350-1000 nm wavelength range, valued at AUD 251,920.

The source is to be used to calibrate single-photon detectors (SPDs) in NPL's new traceable calibration facility.

The required source must be pulsed at a variable repetition rate, with pulse jitter short enough for timing jitter measurements of SPDs, pulse width short enough to measure detection profiles of gated detectors, and low pulse-to-pulse energy variability so that mean pulse energy approximates individual pulse energy.

The technologies likely to fulfil these requirements are Optical Parametric Oscillators (OPOs) with a Second Harmonic Generator (SHG) module and a stable pump laser, or an Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA) with similar SHG and stable pump laser.

The 350-1000 nm tuning range must be achieved without change of optics or re-alignment, with a pulse repetition rate between 1 MHz and 100 kHz (10 MHz-100 kHz desirable) and an operational temperature range of at least 15°C to 30°C.