Summary: Mode conversion in quadratic nonlinear crystals
Tal Ellenbogen,* Ido Dolev, and Ady Arie
Department of Physical Electronics, Faculty of Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
*Corresponding author: ellenbog@post.tau.ac.il
Received March 12, 2008; accepted March 30, 2008;
posted April 24, 2008 (Doc. ID 93679); published May 27, 2008
We propose a novel all-optical, nonlinear mode-conversion scheme based on cascaded three-wave-mixing
phase-matched interactions in quadratic nonlinear crystals. We demonstrate the method experimentally by
performing all-optical mode conversion of an input 1636 nm Hermite­Gaussian mode from the zeroth order
to the first order using two periodically poled LiNbO3 crystals. Nonlinear mode conversion of an input beam
into a higher order, orthogonally polarized output beam can be realized using only one quasiperiodic non-
linear structure. Moreover, it can be enhanced for conversion of complex modes, e.g., Laguerre­Gaussian or
Bessel modes. © 2008 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: 190.2620, 190.4223, 140.3300, 190.4360.
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in
spatial beam shaping, i.e., creating laser beams with
particular transverse phase and intensity distribu-
tions. Some applications require generation of pure
high-order modes, e.g., atom manipulations [1], pho-
ton entanglement experiments [2], and unique opti-

Source: Arie, Ady - Department of Electrical Engineering-Physical Electronics, Tel Aviv University

Collections: Engineering