Calculating characteristics of noncollinear phase matching in uniaxial and biaxial crystals

A method of calculating the characteristics of noncollinear phase matching in both uniaxial and biaxial crystals is presented. Although significant work has been done to characterize collinear phase matching and to present many of its applications, noncollinear phase matching also has unique characteristics, leading to several useful applications. The method presented enables calculations of both the collinear and noncollinear cases, and enables a far larger set of nonlinear crystals and configurations to be studied. (C) 2000 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(00)02304-7].