Scottish joint-venture firm to produce optical parametric oscillator
Edinburgh Instruments (EI; Edinburgh, Scotland) has formed a joint-venture company with the newly formed company StAlight (St. Andrews, Scotland)--Tunable Laser Technology Ltd. (TLT)--which will market an optical-parametric-oscillator (OPO) system originally developed at the University of St. Andrews through the established outlets of EI. StAlight is a spin-off of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the university. The first product in TLT`s commercial development program is OPOtune, a tunable, mid-infrared, intracavity OPO system. The laboratory prototype was developed by the university team, although the patent is held by the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, which has granted TLT an exclusive license for it. The commercial product uses technologies developed at EI and is based on a diode-pumped Nd:YLF laser. Prototypes using intracavity potassium titanyl arsenate crystals currently produce an output of 150 mW at 1.5 µm and 270 mW at 3.44 µm on the signal and idler beams, respectively.