Squeezed singly resonant second-harmonic generation in periodically poled lithium niobate

We determine the theoretical singly resonant second-harmonic generation squeezing performance of several cavity designs and nonlinear materials. We show that, for the doubling of the 1064-nm output of Nd:YAG lasers, monolithic cavities made from periodically poled LiNbO3 (PPLN) will produce the largest amount of squeezing. We also present experimental results for a free-space cavity with a PPLN sample that yielded slightly less than 0.6 dB of measured squeezing. The cavity performance as a function of input power agrees with our theoretical predictions and shows the superior performance of periodically poled materials for the production of bright squeezed light. © 2002 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 190.4410, 190.2620, 160.4330, 270.6570.