Parametric oscillator: HF oscillator-amplifier pumped CdSe parametric oscillator tunable from 14.1 microm to 16.4 microm.

A singly resonant CdSe parametric oscillator with tunable output from 14.1 microm to 16.4 microm is described. The oscillator, pumped by the 2.87-microm line from an HF oscillator-amplifier, is resonant on the signal near 3.5 microm and has produced idler outputs of 100 microJ at 16 microm. Bandwidths varied over the tuning range from 9 cm(-1) to 1.8 cm(-1). Techniques for obtaining a highly coherent HF laser pump beam are presented. The uniform beam from the gain-saturated amplifier allows the use of Fresnel diffraction theory to produce a nearly uniform pump beam at the oscillator cavity.