High-efficiency optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier in BiB_3O_6 for generation of 3  mJ, two-cycle, carrier-envelope-phase-stable pulses at 17  μm

Abstract

We produce a 3 mJ, two-cycle (11.4 fs), 1 kHz, carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stable laser source at 1.7 μm via a three-stage Ti:sapphire-pumped optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier in BiB3O6. We achieve a pump-to-signal conversion efficiency of 18% in the last stage, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest yet achieved for near-octave bandwidth amplification. A f-to-2f measurement shows a CEP instability of 165 mrad over 1 h. This is an ideal light source for generating isolated attosecond pulses in the soft x-ray region.

Towards Terawatt Sub-Cycle Long-Wave Infrared Pulses via Chirped Optical Parametric Amplification and Indirect Pulse Shaping

“…Chirp management in a DC-OPA has been analyzed and experimentally utilized to generate both few-cycle IR laser pulses2223282930 and tunable narrowband mid-IR laser pulses27. Here we use chirp management combined with phase-matching tailoring to not only generate the 4–12  μ m broadband laser pulses, but also compress such broadband pulses to sub-cycle pulse duration via indirect pulse shaping.…”

“…Among a number of few-cycle IR OPCPA sources that have been reported16171819202122, only a few of them have yielded mJ-level, carrier-envelope-phase (CEP)-stable, and near-octave pulses (two cycles and below) at-1.2–2.2  μ m2122 and 1.6–2.7  μ m18. We have previously experimentally demonstrated 3 mJ, CEP-stable two-cycle pulses from 1.2  μ m to 2.2  μ m with the highest 18% pump-to-signal conversion efficiency22 and numerically demonstrated for the first time a robust approach for generation of mJ-level, CEP-stable, two-cycle pulses from 2.4  μ m to 4.0  μ m23. Recently, rapid progress has been made on the generation of short-pulse mid-IR laser sources around 5  μ m or above242526.…”

“…In this paper, we present a design that enables not only generating, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, mJ-level, CEP-stable 4–12  μ m pulses through dual-chirped optical parametric amplification (DC-OPA)222327282930, but also compressing such pulses to sub-cycle duration through indirect pulse shaping. We have experimentally generated a  μJ -level super broadband spectrum, which covers 1.8–4.2  μ m generated by difference frequency generation (DFG) in a BIBO crystal.…”

Ultrafast Mid-IR Laser Pulses Generation via Chirp Manipulated Optical Parametric Amplification

“…As previously investigated in various works [110][111][112][113][114], the chirp-compensation scheme is favorable in such conditions. Here, we investigate the chirp-compensation scheme in the NIR to Mid-IR spectral region and the result is depicted in Figure 4.…”

25 TW, two-cycle IR laser pulses via frequency domain optical parametric amplification

“…To enable few-cycles pulses with multi-mJ amplification, the Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) [9] and OPA techniques have been combined, leading to the Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification scheme (OPCPA, [10,11]). This method enables highpower amplification on the multi-mJ level [12], even for pulses shorter than three-cycles [13][14][15]. The pulses have to be stretched to the picosecond time duration and are then amplified using a pump of similar duration.…”