Jenne, Koji and I assembled the Covesion Oven today, inserted a PPKTP crystal from Raicol, aligned the crystal to a 50mW focus and
got some green beam coming out.
Covesion Oven assembly
The oven contains a brass clip that can clamp a crystal up to 10mm wide x 0.5mm high x 40mm long (according to the instructions). According to the correspondence from Covesion the clip can accomodate a crystal up to 1.5mm high. Our crystal is 1mm x 1mm x 30mm.
- We removed the brass springs from the clip - see Koji's photos
- We placed the Raicol PPKTP crystal (#725) into the clamp with the long polished surfaces facing out to the sides and the roughened surfaces facing up and down.
- We balanced the 10mm x 40mm x 1mm glass plate on top of the crystal.
- We replaced the brass springs in the top of the clip but only tightened the screws a couple of turns so they wouldn't fall out.
- Very carefully and slowly, I tightened the screws a few turns in a star-shaped order to distribute the pressure evenly across the glass top
- Each time I tightened all eight screws, I jiggled each of the four springs to see if there was any compression in them
- Once the springs started to show signs of compression I stopped tightening them and tested the stability of the glass plate - a reasonable amount of pressure was required to move the plate - about the same amount required to push a SR560 across an optical table with your index finger.
- We loosely attached the lid and moved the oven to the table
Alignment of the crystal to the focus
The oven was mounted on a 4-axis Newport translation stage. We plonked the assembly onto the table, removed the lid and adjusted the rough position so that a focus of the 1064nm beam, from a 100mm lens, was positioned near the center of the crystal - then it was clamped down to the table. From here we adjusted the alignment of the stage, using an IR card and a viewer to guide us, until we eventually saw some green beam coming out. We were all very excited by this! We optimized the alignment as best we could using the IR card and then we replaced the lid on the oven. At this point the temperature of the PPKTP was around 26.5C and the green beam coming out look quite dim. We turned the oven up to around 36 degC and observed the beam getting much brighter and we approached the optimum phase-matching condition.
We haven't done anyway quantitative measurements yet but we were pleased with how easy this first stage was.
[Edit by Koji] More photos are on Picasa album |