A narrow line width optical parametric oscillator (OPO) (10) is used a
pump for a tunable optical parametric oscillator to enable it to produce
a mid and long wavelength IR output over a wide 5 20 micron bandwidth.
The pumping OPO (10) is then set up to be non-colinearly phase matched.
To enable the pumping OPO (10) to exhibit the narrow line width, it is
seeded with a narrow line width seeding source. The result is output
energy having an extremely narrow 4 nanometer line width. The narrowness
of the pumping OPO (10) output is derived first by using non-colinear
phase matching in the pumping OPO (10) and secondly by using seeding in
the pumping of the pumping OPO (10).