Adiabatic optical parametric oscillators: steady-state and dynamical behavior

We study singly-resonant optical parametric oscillators with chirped quasi-phasematching gratings as the gain medium, for which adiabatic optical parametric amplification has the potential to enhance conversion efficiency. This configuration, however, has a modulation instability which must be suppressed in order to yield narrowband output signal pulses. We show that high conversion efficiency can be achieved by using either a narrowband seed or a high-finesse intracavity etalon. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America