Geometric scaling of a Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb:YAG thin-disk oscillator yields femtosecond pulses with an average output power of 270 W. The scaled system delivers femtosecond (210-330 fs) pulses with a peak power of 38 MW. These values of average and peak power surpass the performance of any previously reported femtosecond laser oscillator operated in atmospheric air.
Waveform-stabilized laser pulses have revolutionized the exploration of the electronic structure and dynamics of matter by serving as the technological basis for frequency-comb and attosecond spectroscopy. Their primary sources, mode-locked titanium-doped sapphire lasers and erbium/ytterbium-doped fibre lasers, deliver pulses with several nanojoules energy, which is insufficient for many important applications. Here we present the waveform-stabilized light source that is scalable to microjoule energy levels at the full (megahertz) repetition rate of the laser oscillator. A diode-pumped Kerr-lens-mode-locked Yb:YAG thin-disk laser combined with extracavity pulse compression yields waveform-stabilized few-cycle pulses (7.7 fs, 2.2 cycles) with a pulse energy of 0.15 μJ and an average power of 6 W. The demonstrated concept is scalable to pulse energies of several microjoules and near-gigawatt peak powers. The generation of attosecond pulses at the full repetition rate of the oscillator comes into reach. The presented system could serve as a primary source for frequency combs in the mid infrared and vacuum UV with unprecedented high power levels.
A highly-dispersive mirror with the unprecedented group delay dispersion of −10000 fs 2 in the wavelength range of 1025−1035 nm is reported. Reproducible production of a coating with such a high dispersion was possible due to the recently developed robust synthesis technique. Successful employment of the new highly-dispersive mirror in an oscillator is demonstrated.
We report the utilization of the optical Kerr effect in multilayer dielectric coatings, previously discussed only theoretically. We present the design and realization of multilayer dielectric optical structures with layer-specific Kerr nonlinearities, which permit tailoring of the intensity-dependent effects. The modulation depth in reflectance reaches up to 6% for the demonstrated examples of dielectric nonlinear multilayer coatings. We show that the nonlinearity is based on the optical Kerr effect, with the recovery time faster than the laser pulse envelope of 1 ps. Due to high flexibility in design, the reported dielectric nonlinear multilayer coatings have the potential to open hitherto unprecedented possibilities in nonlinear optics and ultrafast laser applications.
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