High-field mid-infrared pulses derived from frequency domain optical parametric amplification

Mid-infrared frequency domain optical parametric amplifier

We report on an optical architecture delivering sub-120 femtosecond laser pulses of 20 µJ tunable from 5.5 µm to 13 µm in the mid-infrared range (mid-IR). The system is based on a dual-band frequency domain optical parametric amplifier (FOPA) optically pumped by a Ti:Sapphire laser and amplifying 2 synchronized femtosecond pulses each with a widely tunable wavelength around 1.6 and 1.9 µm respectively. These amplified pulses are then combined in a GaSe crystal to produce the mid-IR few-cycle pulses by means of difference frequency generation (DFG). The architecture provides a passively stabilized carrier-envelope phase (CEP) whose fluctuations has been characterized to 370 mrad RMS.

Long seed, short pump: converting Yb-doped laser radiation to multi-µJ few-cycle pulses tunable through 2.5-15 µm

We present a setup for generating broadband (up to 1050 cm^-1) and broadly tunable (2.5-15 µm) mid-infrared pulses using an Yb-doped femtosecond laser as the pump source. Our scheme, comprising two parametric amplifiers and a mixing stage, exploits favorable group velocity matching conditions in GaSe pumped at 2 µm to directly produce sub-70 fs pulses throughout the tuning range without any additional dispersion compensation, while 30-50 fs pulse durations are achieved with simple dispersion compensation by propagation through thin bulk media. The generated pulses have sub-1% short- and long-term energy noise, as well as stable spectral parameters, while delivering 0.5-2 W average mid-IR power. We expect the source to be useful for various spectroscopic applications in the mid-IR.

Single-shot phase-matching free ultrashort pulse characterization based on transient absorption in solids

The frequency-resolved optical switching (FROSt) method developed for ultrashort pulse characterization is implemented for single-shot measurements. In this basic demonstration, the delay axis of the spectrogram is spatially encoded by the pump beam having a small incident angle with the photoexcited material. We present the calibration procedure for spectrograms acquired in single-shot and the temporal characterization of 44 fs pulses with central wavelength at 800 nm both in scanning and single-shot FROSt configurations. The retrieved pulses are compared by means of the root-mean-square field error. Finally, the pulses are propagated through a known dispersive material to measure the added group-delay dispersion.