Frequency domain optical parametric amplification

Abstract

Today’s ultrafast lasers operate at the physical limits of optical materials to reach extreme performances. Amplification of single-cycle laser pulses with their corresponding octave-spanning spectra still remains a formidable challenge since the universal dilemma of gain narrowing sets limits for both real level pumped amplifiers as well as parametric amplifiers. We demonstrate that employing parametric amplification in the frequency domain rather than in time domain opens up new design opportunities for ultrafast laser science, with the potential to generate single-cycle multi-terawatt pulses. Fundamental restrictions arising from phase mismatch and damage threshold of nonlinear laser crystals are not only circumvented but also exploited to produce a synergy between increased seed spectrum and increased pump energy. This concept was successfully demonstrated by generating carrier envelope phase stable, 1.43 mJ two-cycle pulses at 1.8 μm wavelength.

Optical Parametric Amplification Techniques for the Generation of High-Energy Few-Optical-Cycles IR Pulses for Strong Field Applications

“…Moreover, since the incident energy is distributed over a large plane, seed and pump pulses with higher energy can be used, overcoming the restrictions imposed by limited crystal apertures. Up to now, ∼1.5-mJ pulses at 1.8 µm with a sub-two cycle duration have been produced at a 100-Hz repetition rate by using the FOPA design [53]. The development of powerful few-cycle parametric sources remains a challenging task from a technological point of view.…”

“…A completely different scheme for achieving parametric amplification of CEP-stable pulses is Frequency-domain Optical Parametric Amplification (FOPA) [53].…”

Carrier envelope phase measurement of multi-cycle mid-infrared field and its application on attosecond pulse generation

“…As we know except for the above proposed application to measure the CEPs of the laser field, another important application of the HHG is to produce the SAPs, especially for using the mid-infrared field to extending the harmonic cutoff, which is a hot issue in the current strong field physics [37][38][39][40]54]. Thus, in the following part, we show and discuss the HHG and the production of the SAPs by using the combined mid-infrared field.…”

“…Recently, by using the Fourier domain optical parametric amplification, Schmidt et al [37] produced the 1.8 um mid-infrared field with the pulse duration of two cycles. Popmintchev et al [38] experimentally showed that by using the mid-infrared laser field, it is possible to extend the maximum harmonic cutoff order and to obtain the higher photon energy.…”

Origin and suppression of back conversion in a phase-matched nonlinear frequency down-conversion process

“…On the one hand, various phase-matching schemes can be applied, including quasi-phase matching (QPM) [1][2][3] , adiabatic phase matching [4] , and multistep cascade phase matching [5,6] . On the other hand, nonlinear crystals can also be fabricated with distinct structures, including periodically poled grating patterns [1][2][3] and sectional tiling [2,7] , and can be doped with rare-earth ions [8,9] . One inherent characteristic of quadratic nonlinear processes is that they allow both forward and backward energy transfers among the interacting waves in the crystal [10] .…”