Tunable broadband intense IR pulse generation at non-degenerate wavelengths using group delay compensation in a dual-crystal OPA scheme

Performance improvement of a nonlinear temporal filter by using cascaded femtosecond optical parametric amplification

In this paper, we report that the conversion efficiency and spectrum of femtosecond optical parametric amplification (fs-OPA) can be significantly enhanced by employing a compact cascaded femtosecond OPA (CF-OPA) scheme with the self-compensation of the temporal walk-off between two nonlinear gain media. Correspondingly, the gain related temporal contrast can also be improved. The feasibility of the CF-OPA method using three cascaded BBO crystals is numerically and experimentally analyzed. Moreover, by replacing the conventional fs-OPA with the CF-OPA and optimizing the design, the performance of a nonlinear temporal filter combining cross-polarized wave generation and fs-OPA is comprehensively improved. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the CF-OPA scheme, which can generate high-performance cleaned pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate with energy of 340μJ, energy fluctuation below 0.9% (RMS), spectral width of 97 nm (FWHM), Fourier-transform-limited pulse width of 12 fs and temporal contrast better than 10^-12. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported temporal walk-off self-compensated quasi-collinear CF-OPA geometry adopting three cascaded BBO crystals, which can be easily generalized to other wavelengths or nonlinear crystals. The above nonlinear temporal filter with a CF-OPA scheme has the rarest comprehensive parameters, which can provide excellent seed pulses for PW and 10 PW class femtosecond laser systems.

Ultrabroadband microjoule 1.8 μm laser pulse from a single-stage broadband pumped OPA

We propose a broadband pumped optical parametric amplification scheme for the generation of a micojoule few-cycle pulse centered at 1.8 μm. Owing to the opposite chirp of the broadband pump and seed pulses, an idler pulse with an FWHM bandwidth of 434 nm is obtained, which can be effectively compressed to a near-transform-limited duration of 13.1 fs by simply compensating for the linear chirp. The picojoule-level seed is amplified to microjoule level in a single stage with a pump pulse of 100 μJ, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency of 9%. The presented scheme is potentially applicable in various nonlinear crystals with different kinds of femtosecond laser systems, which provides not only an efficient approach of down-converting a near-infrared laser with moderate energy to the mid-infrared region, but also a suitable seeding source in high-energy OPCPA systems.

Ultrabroadband tunable OPA design using a spectrally broadened pump source

A robust optical parametric amplifier (OPA) scheme is proposed in which we have experimentally achieved broadband bandwidth for a collinear OPA design that exhibits good beam quality and spatial distribution using a type-I β barium borate crystal. The applied pump pulses are simultaneously spectrally broadened and temporally stretched in a multi-plate system before being used to amplify the temporally stretched white light. In this case, the phase matching can be obtained for a broad range of wavelengths, and we have managed to achieve bandwidths three times broader than a conventional narrowband pumped collinear OPA. With a bandwidth as broad as 400 nm centered at 1400 nm, as well as a broadband angular dispersion-free idler, the signal bandwidth supports transform-limited pulses as short as 7.5 fs which correspond to sub-two optical cycles for this center wavelength. Furthermore, the system is easily tunable over a 400 nm range of bandwidths starting from 1100 to 1500 nm. The proposed scheme provides a versatile near-infrared/middle-infrared source with a broad bandwidth and fine tuning capability which paves the way for ultrafast spectroscopy and strong field applications.