Widely Tunable Middle Infrared Optical Parametric Oscillator Pumped by the Q-Switched Ho:GdVO_4 Laser

We demonstrate a middle infrared ZnGeP_2 optical parametric oscillator pumped by the Q-switched Ho:GdVO_4 laser. When the incident Ho pump power is 4.12 W, the maximum average output power of the ZGP-OPO laser is 2.05 W, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 74.6%. The ZGP-OPO laser produces 4.2 ns mid-infrared pulses at a pulse repetition rate of 5 kHz. In addition, we obtain 0.8 um of tunable range for the signal wave and 2.1 um of tunable range for the idler wave.