Ayman Alismail,
Haochuang Wang,
Jonathan Brons,
Hanieh Fattahi
Journal of Visualized Experiments
(125)
e55717
(2017)
| Journal
This is a report on a 100 W, 20 mJ, 1 ps Yb:YAG thin-disk regenerative amplifier. A homemade Yb:YAG thin-disk, Kerr-lens mode-locked oscillator with turn-key performance and microjoule-level pulse energy is used to seed the regenerative chirped-pulse amplifier. The amplifier is placed in airtight housing. It operates at room temperature and exhibits stable operation at a 5 kHz repetition rate, with a pulse-to-pulse stability less than 1%. By employing a 1.5 mm-thick beta barium borate crystal, the frequency of the laser output is doubled to 515 nm, with an average power of 70 W, which corresponds to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 70%. This superior performance makes the system an attractive pump source for optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifiers in the near-infrared and mid-infrared spectral range. Combining the turn-key performance and the superior stability of the regenerative amplifier, the system facilitates the generation of a broadband, CEP-stable seed. Providing the seed and pump of the optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) from one laser source eliminates the demand of active temporal synchronization between these pulses. This work presents a detailed guide to set up and operate a Yb:YAG thin-disk regenerative amplifier, based on chirped-pulse amplification (CPA), as a pump source for an optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier.
The generation of superoctave spectra from the interaction of intense ultrashort optical pulses and cubic nonlinearity is the result of interplay between the dispersion and nonlinearity of a material and various propagation effects. The cubic nonlinearity can be enhanced when it is combined with a quadratic-cascaded nonlinearity, relaxing the requirement on the laser’s peak intensity for supercontinuum (SC) generation. In this Letter, we demonstrate and compare the generation of an SC driven from cubic and cascaded quadratic nonlinearities at an anomalous and zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW). We show the filament-free SC generation of femtosecond mid-infrared pulses by harvesting cascaded quadratic nonlinearity and, at ZDW, requires a lower threshold peak intensity and results in a higher power spectral density for the newly generated spectral components. The presented method is a suitable approach for generating multi-octave spectra from low peak-power, high average-power oscillators or a suitable seed for optical parametric amplifiers and multi-octave field synthesizers.
We report on a simple scheme to generate broadband, μJ pulses centered at 2.1 μm with an intrinsic carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stability from the output of a Yb:YAG regenerative amplifier delivering 1-ps pulses with randomly varying CEP. To the best of our knowledge, the reported system has the highest optical-to-optical efficiency for converting 1-ps, 1 μm pulses to CEP stable, broadband, 2.1 μm pulses. The generated coherent light carries an energy of 5.4 μJ, at 5 kHz repetition rate, that can be scaled to higher energy or power by using a suitable front end, if required. The system is ideally suited for seeding broadband parametric amplifiers and multichannel synthesizers pumped by picosecond Yb-doped amplifiers, obviating the need for active timing synchronization. Alternatively, this scheme can be combined with high-power oscillators with tens of μJ energy to generate CEP stable, multioctave supercontinua, suitable for field-resolved and time-resolved spectroscopy.
Nonlinear optics: Attosecond nanophotonics
Giulio Vampa,
Hanieh Fattahi,
Jelena Vuckovic,
Ferenc Krausz
Combining attosecond science and nanophotonics potentially offers a route to enhance control over light-matter interactions at the nanoscale and provide a promising platform for information processing.
Nonlinear optics: Attosecond nanophotonics
Giulio Vampa,
Hanieh Fattahi,
Jelena Vuckovic,
Ferenc Krausz
Nature Photonics
11
(4)
210-212
(2017)
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| PDF
1 kW, 200 mJ picosecond thin-disk laser system
Thomas Nubbemeyer,
Martin Kaumanns,
Moritz Ueffing,
Martin Gorjan,
Ayman Alismail,
Hanieh Fattahi,
Jonathan Brons,
Oleg Pronin,
Helena G. Barros, et al.
We report on a laser system based on thin-disk technology and chirped pulse amplification, providing output pulse energies of 200 mJ at a 5 kHz repetition rate. The amplifier contains a ring-type cavity and two thin Yb:YAG disks, each pumped by diode laser systems providing up to 3.5 kW power at a 969 nm wavelength. The average output power of more than 1 kW is delivered in an excellent output beam characterized by M2=1.1. The output pulses are compressed to 1.1 ps at full power with a pair of dielectric gratings.
1 kW, 200 mJ picosecond thin-disk laser system
Thomas Nubbemeyer,
Martin Kaumanns,
Moritz Ueffing,
Martin Gorjan,
Ayman Alismail,
Hanieh Fattahi,
Jonathan Brons,
Oleg Pronin,
Helena G. Barros, et al.
Optics Letters
42
(7)
1381-1384
(2017)
| Journal
| PDF
Kontakt
Forschungsgruppe Hanieh Fattahi
Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts Staudtstr. 2 91058 Erlangen
