Cavity-enhanced sum-frequency generation of blue light with near-unity conversion efficiency

Abstract: We report on double-resonant highly efficient sum-frequency generation in the blue range. The system consists of a 10-mm-long periodically poled KTP crystal placed in a double-resonant bow-tie cavity and pumped by a fiber laser at 1064.5 nm and a Ti:sapphire laser at 849.2 nm. An optical power of 375 mW at 472.4 nm in a TEM$_{00}$ mode was generated with pump powers of 250 mW at 849.2 nm and 200 mW at 1064.5 nm coupled into the double-resonant ring resonator with 88$\%$ mode-matching. The resulting internal conversion efficiency of 95($\pm 3$)$\%$ of the photons mode-matched to the cavity constitutes, to the best of our knowledge, the highest overall achieved quantum conversion efficiency using continuous-wave pumping. Very high conversion efficiency is rendered possible due to very low intracavity loss on the level of 0.3$\%$ and high nonlinear conversion coefficient up to 0.045(0.015) W$^{-1}$. Power stability measurements performed over one hour show a stability of 0.8$\%$. The generated blue light can be tuned within 5 nm around the center wavelength of 472.4 nm, limited by the phase-matching of our nonlinear crystal. This can however be expanded to cover the entire blue spectrum (420 nm to 510 nm) by proper choice of nonlinear crystals and pump lasers. Our experimental results agree very well with analytical and numerical simulations taking into account cavity impedance matching and depletion of the pump fields.