High-repetition-rate sub-5-fs pulses with 12 GW peak power from fiber-amplifier-pumped optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Combined Yb/Nd driver for optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers

We report on the developed front-end/pump system for optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers. The system is based on a dual output fiber oscillator/power amplifier which seeds and assures all-optical synchronization of femtosecond Yb and picosecond Nd laser amplifiers operating at a central wavelength of 1030 nm and 1064 nm, respectively. At the central wavelength of 1030 nm, the fiber oscillator generates partially stretched 4 ps pulses with the spectrum supporting a <120 fs pulse duration and pulse energy of 0.45 nJ. The energy of generated 1064 nm pulses is 0.15 nJ, which is sufficient for the efficient seeding of high-contrast Nd:YVO chirped pulse regenerative amplifier/post amplifier systems generating 9 mJ pulses compressible to 16 ps duration. The power amplification stages, based on Nd:YAG crystals, provide 62 mJ pulses compressible to 20 ps pulse duration at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. Further energy scaling currently is prevented by limited dimensions of the diffraction gratings, which, because of the fast progress in MLD grating manufacturing technologies is only a temporary obstacle.

High-average-power 2 μm few-cycle optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier at 100 kHz repetition rate

Sources of long wavelengths few-cycle high repetition rate pulses are becoming increasingly important for a plethora of applications, e.g., in high-field physics. Here, we report on the realization of a tunable optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier at 100 kHz repetition rate. At a central wavelength of 2 μm, the system delivered 33 fs pulses and a 6 W average power corresponding to 60 μJ pulse energy with gigawatt-level peak powers. Idler absorption and its crystal heating is experimentally investigated for a BBO. Strategies for further power scaling to several tens of watts of average power are discussed.

Pulse synchronization system for picosecond pulse-pumped OPCPA with femtosecond-level relative timing jitter

A simple and compact scheme for synchronization of the pump and signal pulses for short-pulse OPCPA is demonstrated. Relative timing jitter of 17 fs RMS is achieved (1% of the pump pulse duration) and the system remains locked for hours. The scheme uses a balanced optical cross correlator to detect relative delays between the pump and signal pulses and can be operated with just 10's of μJ of pump energy and pJ-level signal energies.

Generation of high-photon flux-coherent soft x-ray radiation with few-cycle pulses

We present a tabletop source of coherent soft x-ray radiation with high-photon flux. Two-cycle pulses delivered by a fiber-laser-pumped optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier operating at 180 kHz repetition rate are upconverted via high harmonic generation in neon to photon energies beyond 200 eV. A maximum photon flux of 1.3·10(8) photons/s is achieved within a 1% bandwidth at 125 eV photon energy. This corresponds to a conversion efficiency of ~10(-9), which can be reached due to a gas jet simultaneously providing a high target density and phase matching. Further scaling potential toward higher photon flux as well as higher photon energies are discussed.

Thermal effects in high average power optical parametric amplifiers

Optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) have the reputation of being average power scalable due to the instantaneous nature of the parametric process (zero quantum defect). This Letter reveals serious challenges originating from thermal load in the nonlinear crystal caused by absorption. We investigate these thermal effects in high average power OPAs based on beta barium borate. Absorption of both pump and idler waves is identified to contribute significantly to heating of the nonlinear crystal. A temperature increase of up to 148 K with respect to the environment is observed and mechanical tensile stress up to 40 MPa is found, indicating a high risk of crystal fracture under such conditions. By restricting the idler to a wavelength range far from absorption bands and removing the crystal coating we reduce the peak temperature and the resulting temperature gradient significantly. Guidelines for further power scaling of OPAs and other nonlinear devices are given.

Beam delivery and pulse compression to sub-50 fs of a modelocked thin-disk laser in a gas-filled Kagome-type HC-PCF fiber

We present two experiments confirming that hypocycloid Kagome-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) are excellent candidates for beam delivery of MW peak powers and pulse compression down to the sub-50 fs regime. We demonstrate temporal pulse compression of a 1030-nm Yb:YAG thin disk laser providing 860 fs, 1.9 µJ pulses at 3.9 MHz. Using a single-pass grating pulse compressor, we obtained a pulse duration of 48 fs (FWHM), a spectral bandwidth of 58 nm, and an average output power of 4.2 W with an overall power efficiency into the final polarized compressed pulse of 56%. The pulse energy was 1.1 µJ. This corresponds to a peak power of more than 10 MW and a compression factor of 18 taking into account the exact temporal pulse profile measured with a SHG FROG. The compressed pulses were close to the transform limit of 44 fs. Moreover, we present transmission of up to 97 µJ pulses at 10.5 ps through 10-cm long fiber, corresponding to more than twice the critical peak power for self-focusing in silica.

Octave-spanning OPCPA system delivering CEP-stable few-cycle pulses and 22 W of average power at 1 MHz repetition rate

We report on an OPCPA system delivering CEP-stable pulses with a pulse duration of only 1.7 optical cycles at 880 nm wavelength. This pulse duration is achieved by the generation, optical parametric amplification and compression of a full optical octave of bandwidth. The system is pumped by a high average power Yb-fiber laser system, which allows for operation of the OPCPA at up to 1 MHz repetition rate and 22 W of average output power. Further scaling towards single-cycle pulses, higher energy and output power is discussed.

Pulsed operation of a high average power Yb:YAG thin-disk multipass amplifier

An Yb:YAG thin-disk multipass laser amplifier system was developed operating in a 10 Hz burst operation mode with 800 µs burst duration and 100 kHz intra-burst repetition rate. Methods for the suppression of parasitic amplified spontaneous emission are presented. The average output pulse energy is up to 44.5 mJ and 820 fs compressed pulse duration. The average power of 4.45 kW during the burst is the highest reported for this type of amplifier.

Two-color pumped OPCPA system emitting spectra spanning 1.5 octaves from VIS to NIR

We present a two-color pumped OPCPA system which delivers an ultra-broadband spectrum spanning from 430 nm to 1.3 µm with a Fourier limited pulse duration of sub-3 fs and 1 µJ of pulse energy at a repetition rate of 200 kHz. All frequency components propagate on a common path, thus the spectral phase along the whole spectrum is well-defined. The inner part of the spectrum has been compressed to sub-5 fs pulses.

1 MHz repetition rate hollow fiber pulse compression to sub-100-fs duration at 100 W average power

We report on nonlinear pulse compression at very high average power. A high-power fiber chirped pulse amplification system based on a novel large pitch photonic crystal fiber delivers 700 fs pulses with 200 μJ pulse energy at a 1 MHz repetition rate, resulting in 200 W of average power. Subsequent spectral broadening in a xenon-filled hollow-core fiber and pulse compression with chirped mirrors is employed for pulse shortening and peak power enhancement. For the first time, to our knowledge, more than 100 W of average power are transmitted through a noble-gas-filled hollow fiber. After pulse compression of 81 fs, 93 μJ pulses are obtained at a 1 MHz repetition rate.

Two-color deep-ultraviolet 40-fs pulses based on parametric amplification at 100 kHz

We present a 100-kHz deep-ultraviolet (DUV) laser system that generates 40-fs pulses. A 520-nm pulse generated by a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier pumped by the second harmonic of a Ti:sapphire laser is converted into 226- and 260-nm DUV pulses simultaneously with pulse energies of 250 and 130 nJ (average powers: 25 and 13 mW), respectively. The DUV pulses were estimated to have durations of ca. 40 fs by cross-correlation measurements based on (1 + 1') two-color ionization of gaseous nitric oxide.

Generation of high quality, 1.3 cycle pulses by active phase control of an octave spanning supercontinuum

Nonlinear pulse compression based on the generation of ultra-broadband supercontinuum (SC) in an all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber (ANDi PCF) is demonstrated. The highly coherent and smooth octave-spanning SC spectra are generated using 6 fs, 3 nJ pulses from a Ti:Sapphire oscillator for pumping a 13 mm piece of ANDi PCF. Applying active phase control has enabled the generation of 4.5 fs pulses. Additional spectral amplitude shaping has increased the bandwidth of the SC spectra further leading to nearly transform-limited pulses with a duration of 3.64 fs, which corresponds to only 1.3 optical cycles at a central wavelength of 810 nm. This is the shortest pulse duration achieved via compression of SC spectra generated in PCF to date. Due to the high stability and the smooth spectral intensity and phase distribution of the generated SC, an excellent temporal pulse quality exhibiting a pulse contrast of 14 dB with respect to the pre- and post-pulses is achieved.

Generation of µW level plateau harmonics at high repetition rate

The process of high harmonic generation allows for coherent transfer of infrared laser light to the extreme ultraviolet spectral range opening a variety of applications. The low conversion efficiency of this process calls for optimization or higher repetition rate intense ultrashort pulse lasers. Here we present state-of-the-art fiber laser systems for the generation of high harmonics up to 1 MHz repetition rate. We perform measurements of the average power with a calibrated spectrometer and achieved µW harmonics between 45 nm and 61 nm (H23-H17) at a repetition rate of 50 kHz. Additionally, we show the potential for few-cycle pulses at high average power and repetition rate that may enable water-window harmonics at unprecedented repetition rate.

Analysis and suppression of parasitic processes in noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers

The influence of parasitic processes on the performance of ultra-broadband noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers (NOPA's) is investigated for walk-off and non-walk-off compensating configurations. Experimental results with a white-light-seeded NOPA agree well with numerical simulations. The same model shows that 10% of the output energy of an amplified signal can be transferred into a parasitic second harmonic of the signal. These findings are supported by quantitative measurements on a few-cycle NOPA, where a few percent of the signal energy is converted to its second harmonic in the walk-off compensating case. This effect is reduced by an order of magnitude in the non-walk-off compensating configuration. A detailed study of the phase-matching conditions of the most common nonlinear crystals provides guidelines for designing NOPA systems.

High quality sub-two cycle pulses from compression of supercontinuum generated in all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate nonlinear pulse compression based on recently introduced highly coherent broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation in all-normal dispersion photonic crystal fiber (ANDi PCF). The special temporal properties of the octave-spanning SC spectra generated with 15 fs, 1.7 nJ pulses from a Ti:Sapphire oscillator in a 1.7 mm fiber piece allow the compression to 5.0 fs high quality pulses by linear chirp compensation with a compact chirped mirror compressor. This is the shortest pulse duration achieved to date from the external recompression of SC pulses generated in PCF. Numerical simulations in excellent agreement with the experimental results are used to discuss the scalability of the concept to the single-cycle regime employing active phase shaping. We show that previously reported limits to few-cycle pulse generation from compression of SC spectra generated in conventional PCF possessing one or more zero dispersion wavelengths do not apply for ANDi PCF.