Multi-color carrier-envelope-phase stabilization for high-repetition-rate multi-pulse coherent synthesis

Targeted generation of complex temporal pulse profiles

A targeted shaping of complex femtosecond pulse waveforms and their characterization is essential for many spectroscopic applications. A 4f pulse shaper combined with an advanced pulse characterization technique should, in the idealized case, serve this purpose for an arbitrary pulse shape. This is, however, violated in the real experiment by many imperfections and limitations. Although the complex waveform generation has been studied in-depth, the comparison of the effects of various experimental factors on the actual pulse shape has stayed out of focus so far. In this paper, we present an experimental study on the targeted generation and retrieval of complex pulses by using two commonly-used techniques: spatial-light-modulator (SLM)-based 4f pulse shaper and second-harmonic generation frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) and cross-correlation FROG (XFROG). By combining FROG and XFROG traces, we analyze the pulses with SLM-adjusted complex random phases ranging from simple to very complex waveforms. We demonstrate that the combination of FROG and XFROG ensures highly consistent pulse retrieval, irrespective of the used retrieval algorithm. This enabled us to evaluate the role of various experimental factors on the agreement between the simulated and actual pulse shape. The factors included the SLM pixelation, SLM pixel crosstalk, finite laser focal spot in the pulse shaper, or interference fringes induced by the SLM. In particular, we observe that including the SLM pixelation and crosstalk effect significantly improved the pulse shaping simulation. We demonstrate that the complete simulation can faithfully reproduce the pulse shape. Nevertheless, even in this case, the intensity of individual peaks differs between the retrieved and simulated pulses, typically by 10–20% of the peak value, with the mean standard deviation of 5–9% of the maximum pulse intensity. We discuss the potential sources of remaining discrepancies between the theoretically expected and experimentally retrieved pulse.

Synchronized multi-wavelength soliton fiber laser via intracavity group delay modulation

Locking of longitudinal modes in laser cavities is the common path to generate ultrashort pulses. In traditional multi-wavelength mode-locked lasers, the group velocities rely on lasing wavelengths due to the chromatic dispersion, yielding multiple trains of independently evolved pulses. Here, we show that mode-locked solitons at different wavelengths can be synchronized inside the cavity by engineering the intracavity group delay with a programmable pulse shaper. Frequency-resolved measurements fully retrieve the fine temporal structure of pulses, validating the direct generation of synchronized ultrafast lasers from two to five wavelengths with sub-pulse repetition-rate up to ~1.26 THz. Simulation results well reproduce and interpret the key experimental phenomena, and indicate that the saturable absorption effect automatically synchronize multi-wavelength solitons in despite of the small residual group delay difference. These results demonstrate an effective approach to create synchronized complex-structure solitons, and offer an effective platform to study the evolution dynamics of nonlinear wavepackets.

High-repetition-rate mid-IR femtosecond pulse synthesis from two mid-IR CW QCL-seeded OPAs

Coherent pulse synthesis in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) domain is of great interest to achieve broadband sources from parent pulses, motivated by the advantages of optical frequency properties for molecular spectroscopy and quantum dynamics. We demonstrate a simple mid-IR coherent synthesizer based on two high-repetition-rate optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) at nJ-level pump energy. The relative carrier envelope phase between the two OPAs was passively stable for a shared continuous wave (CW) quantum cascade laser (QCL) seed. Lastly, we synthesized mid-IR pulses with a duration of 105 fs ranging from 3.4 to 4.0 µm. The scheme demonstrated the potential to obtain broader mid-IR sources by coherent synthesis from multiple CW QCL-seeded OPAs.

Enhanced spectral broadening in an optical parametric oscillator based on a PPLN crystal

We report a chirped-pulse optical parametric oscillator (OPO) generating light pulses with an instantaneous-bandwidth much wider than the parametric gain-bandwidth of nonlinear crystals. Our numerical simulations show that a relatively high residual second-order-dispersion within the OPO cavity is required in order to achieve the maximum signal-bandwidth from an OPO system. Based on this principle, we constructed an OPO using a 3-mm-long PPLN crystal, which produced a signal wave with an instantaneous-bandwidth of 20 THz (at -20 dB) covering 1447-1600 nm, roughly twice as much as the phase-matching bandwidth of the nonlinear crystal. This scheme represents a promising technical route for generating high-repetition-rate, ultrashort optical pulses with a wide bandwidth at various wavelengths, which may benefit many applications, including optical coherence tomography, pulse synthesis and spectroscopy.

Chirped-pulse optical parametric oscillators

We demonstrated that by introducing an extra optical material with a high nonlinear refractive index into a conventional optical parametric oscillator (OPO) cavity and managing the intra-cavity dispersion, a chirped-pulse OPO (CPOPO) can be constructed, generating optical pulses with an instantaneous bandwidth much wider than the pump bandwidth. Experimentally, from a CPOPO pumped by a Yb-fiber laser system centered at 1058 nm with a pulse duration of 230 fs and a -20  dB bandwidth of 8.7 THz, we obtained a signal wave with a -20  dB bandwidth of 28.4 THz and an idler wave covering 2900-3960 nm with a -20  dB bandwidth of 27.7 THz.

Mode-resolved 10-GHz frequency comb from a femtosecond optical parametric oscillator

We report a 10-GHz frequency comb generated by filtering a 333.3-MHz OPO frequency comb with a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity, which was directly stabilized to the incident fundamental comb. This result is supported by a detailed analysis of the Vernier-effect-induced multiple peaks in the transmitted comb power as the FP cavity spacing is detuned. Modes of the generated 10-GHz comb were clearly resolved by a Fourier transform spectrometer with a spectral resolution of 830 MHz, considerably better than the Nyquist sampling limit. The potentially broad tuning range of this mode-resolved OPO frequency comb opens unique opportunities for precise frequency metrology and high-precision spectroscopy.