Investigations on the beam pointing stability of a pulsed optical parametric oscillator.

Although the beam pointing stability of optical parametric oscillators and amplifiers is important for various applications few results on this parameter have been published. Here, we investigate the beam pointing stability of an injection-seeded, nanosecond optical parametric oscillator, compare it to its pump laser, and measure correlations between them. Although correlation between both quantities are found, the beam pointing stability of the OPO is significantly better that the one of its pump. Furthermore, the concept of the Allan variance is applied to analyze the temporal components of the pointing stability.