We produce carrier-envelope-phase-stable 15.7-fs (2-cycle) 740-microJ pulses at the 2.1-microm carrier wavelength, from a three-stage optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier system, pumped by an optically synchronized 49-ps 11-mJ Nd:YLF laser. A novel seed pulse spectral shaping method is used to ascertain the true amplified seed energy and the parametric superfluorescence levels.

No abstract

The concept of optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification is applied to attain pulses with energies up to 8 mJ and a bandwidth of more than 100 THz. Stretched broadband seed pulses from a Ti:sapphire oscillator are amplified in a multistage noncollinear type I phase-matched beta-barium borate parametric amplifier by use of an independent picosecond laser with lock-to-clock repetition rate synchronization. Partial compression of amplified pulses is demonstrated down to a 10-fs duration with a down-chirped pulse stretcher and a nearly lossless compressor comprising bulk material and positive-dispersion chirped mirrors.

No abstract

We study hole dynamics in GaAs layers grown by molecular-beam epitaxy at 270 °C by two-color pump-and-probe experiments employing femtosecond 800-nm-wavelength pulses for sample’s excitation and 9-μm-wavelength pulses for probing the induced intervalence band absorption. Hole trapping time in as-grown, undoped layer is equal to 2 ps; it increases after thermal annealing or Be doping, and decreases in Si-doped layer. The mechanism of the hole trapping is discussed; it is shown that experimental observations are consistent with the hole trapping at neutral arsenic antisites model.