| Abstract: | An optical parametric oscillator (OPO) having an optical pump, which generates a pump beam at a pump frequency greater than a desired signal frequency, a nonlinear optical medium oriented so that a signal wave at the desired signal frequency and a corresponding idler wave are produced when the pump beam (wave) propagates through the nonlinear optical medium, resulting in beam walk off of the signal and idler waves, and an optical cavity which directs the signal wave to repeatedly pass through the nonlinear optical medium, said optical cavity comprising an equivalently even number of non-planar mirrors that produce image rotation on each pass through the nonlinear optical medium. Utilizing beam walk off where the signal wave and said idler wave have nonparallel Poynting vectors in the nonlinear medium and image rotation, a correlation zone of distance equal to approximately .rho.L.sub.crystal is created which, through multiple passes through the nonlinear medium, improves the beam quality of the OPO output. |