Numerical simulations of the impact of wavefront phase distortions of pump on the beam quality of OPA

A numerical model of optical parametric amplification (OPA) is introduced to investigate the impact of wavefront phase distortion of pump on the beam quality of signal. Numerical results show that the unidentical walk-off directions of the pump and the idler waves are the main factors leading to the transfer of wavefront phase distortions of the pump to the signal, and by reducing the angle between the two directions, the beam quality factor (M2) can be greatly decreased and hence the good beam quality of the signal can be maintained.