State-of-the-art high power Yb-doped large mode area fibers have been developed to a performance level able to reach the so-called mode instability threshold. In this contribution we will discuss the experimental results regarding the temporal evolution (build up and decay) of this effect to come closer to a comprehensive understanding of its driving mechanisms. Our investigations prove that the relevant time scale for build up and decay of mode instability is in the millisecond range and thus deliver experimental evidence of underlying thermal effects. To the best of our knowledge these are the first systematic, time resolved investigations on that topic.
In this paper, the average power scalability of components that can be used for intense few-cycle lasers based on nonlinear compression of modern femtosecond solid-state lasers is investigated. The key components of such a setup, namely, the gas-filled waveguides, laser windows, chirped mirrors for pulse compression and low dispersion mirrors for beam collimation, focusing, and beam steering are tested under high-average-power operation using a kilowatt cw laser. We demonstrate the long-term stable transmission of kW-level average power through a hollow capillary and a Kagome-type photonic crystal fiber. In addition, we show that sapphire substrates significantly improve the average power capability of metal-coated mirrors. Ultimately, ultrabroadband dielectric mirrors show negligible heating up to 1 kW of average power. In summary, a technology for scaling of few-cycle lasers up to 1 kW of average power and beyond is presented.
400 kHz, which to the best of our knowledge corresponds to the highest phase stability ever demonstrated for highpower, multi-MHz-repetition-rate ultrafast lasers. This system will enable experiments in attosecond physics at unprecedented repetition rates, it offers ideal prerequisites for the generation and field-resolved electro-optical sampling of high-power, broadband infrared pulses, and it is suitable for phase-stable white light generation.
Modern ultrafast laser architectures enable high-order harmonic generation (HHG) in gases at (multi-) MHz repetition rates, where each atom interacts with multiple pulses before leaving the HHG volume. This raises the question of cumulative plasma effects on the nonlinear conversion. Utilizing a femtosecond enhancement cavity with HHG in argon and on-axis geometric extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) output coupling, we experimentally compare the single-pulse case with a double-pulse HHG regime in which each gas atom is hit by two pulses while traversing the interaction volume. By varying the pulse repetition rate (18.4 and 36.8 MHz) in an 18.4-MHz roundtrip-frequency cavity with a finesse of 187, and leaving all other pulse parameters identical (35-fs, 0.6-μJ input pulses), we observe a dramatic decrease in the overall conversion efficiency (output-coupled power divided by the input power) in the double-pulse regime. The plateau harmonics (25–50 eV) exhibit very similar flux despite the twofold difference in repetition rate and average power. We attribute this to a spatially inhomogeneous plasma distribution that reduces the HHG volume, decreasing the generated XUV flux and/or affecting the spatial XUV beam profile, which reduces the efficiency of output coupling through the pierced mirror. These findings demonstrate the importance of cumulative plasma effects for power scaling of high-repetition-rate HHG in general and for applications in XUV frequency comb spectroscopy and in attosecond metrology in particular.
We introduce and experimentally validate a pulse picking technique based on a travelling-wave-type acousto-optic modulator (AOM) having the AOM carrier frequency synchronized to the repetition rate of the original pulse train. As a consequence, the phase noise characteristic of the original pulse train is largely preserved, rendering this technique suitable for applications requiring carrier-envelope phase stabilization. In a proof-of-principle experiment, the 1030-nm spectral part of an 74-MHz, carrier-envelope phase stable Ti:sapphire oscillator is amplified and reduced in pulse repetition frequency by a factor of two, maintaining an unprecedentedly low carrier-envelope phase noise spectral density of below 68 mrad. Furthermore, a comparative analysis reveals that the pulse-picking-induced additional amplitude noise is minimized, when the AOM is operated under synchronicity. The proposed scheme is particularly suitable when the down-picked repetition rate is still in the multi-MHz-range, where Pockels cells cannot be applied due to piezoelectric ringing.
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