Understanding fifth-harmonic generation in CLBO

We report on results of fifth harmonic generation in Cesium Lithium Borate (CLBO) using a three-crystal cascaded frequency conversion scheme designed to study the energy balance of the final sum frequency generation stage. The experimental setup independently combines the first and fourth harmonic of a Nd:Glass laser in a 5mm thick CLBO crystal. Energy balance between the incoming and output energy is close to unity when the CLBO is out of phase matching and approximately 80% when the crystal is in phase matching. A detailed analysis of the residual fundamental and fourth harmonic energy indicates 5^th harmonic light is being generated but only 26% is unaccounted for. We attribute the missing light to linear transmission loss in the CLBO oven. The ratio of the output to input energy is unity when the missing 5^th harmonic is incorporated into the calculations. Two-dimensional plane wave mixing simulations show agreement with the results at lower intensities.