Some Newly Developed Crystals for Measurement of Ultrafast Laser Pulses by Second Harmonic Generation

Second harmonic generation in nonlinear optical crystal is a well-established technique for the characterization of ultrafast laser pulses. However, only selected nonlinear crystalline materials can be used due to their limitations in transparency cut-off and limited phase-matching range. It is observed that some newly discovered crystals, such as CLBO, KABO, LB4, and KBBF, have suitable characteristics for use in ultrafast nonlinear optical applications. We have calculated several linear and nonlinear optical parameters including phase-matching angle, angular and spectral acceptance bandwidths, walk-off angle, nonlinear coupling coefficient, and group-velocity mismatch for the generation of vacuum ultraviolet laser radiation in these crystals by type-I and type-II second harmonic generation techniques.