We present a novel concept for pulse compression scheme applicable at RF, microwave and possibly to optical frequencies based on structured energy distribution in cavities supporting degenerate band-edge (DBE) modes. For such modes a significant fraction of energy resides in a small fraction of the cavity length. Such energy concentration provides a basis for superior performance for applications in microwave pulse compression devices (MPC) when compared to conventional cavities. The novel design features: larger loaded quality factor of the cavity and stored energy compared to conventional designs, robustness to variations of cavity loading, energy feeding and extraction at the cavity center, substantial reduction of the cavity size by use of equivalent lumped circuits for low energy sections of the cavity, controlled pulse shaping via engineered extraction techniques. The presented concepts are general, in terms of equivalent transmission lines, and can be applied to a variety of realistic guiding structures.
Pulse self-compression followed by the generation of resonant radiation is a well known phenomenon in non-linear optics. Resonant radiation is important as it allows for efficient and tunable wavelength conversion. We vary the chirp of the initial pulse and find in simulations and experiments that a small positive chirp enhances the pulse compression and strongly increases the generation of resonant radiation. This result corroborates previously published simulation results indicating an improved degree of pulse compression for a small positive chirp [1]. It also demonstrates how pulse evoluti…
We demonstrate soliton-effect pulse compression in mm-long photonic crystal waveguides resulting from strong anomalous dispersion and self-phase modulation. Compression from 3ps to 580fs, at low pulse energies(~10pJ), is measured via autocorrelation.
Ghost imaging (GI) lidar, as a novel remote sensing technique,has been receiving increasing interest in recent years. By combining pulse-compression technique and coherent detection with GI, we propose a new lidar system called pulse-compression GI lidar. Our analytical results, which are backed up by numerical simulations, demonstrate that pulse-compression GI lidar can obtain the target's spatial intensity distribution, range and moving velocity. Compared with conventional pulsed GI lidar system, pulse-compression GI lidar, without decreasing the range resolution, is easy to obtain high sing…
Post-compression of ultra-short laser pulses via self-phase modulation is routinely employed for the generation of laser pulses with optical bandwidths reaching far beyond the laser gain limitations. While high compression factors can be routinely achieved, the compressed pulses typically suffer from temporal quality degradation. We numerically and experimentally analyze the deterioration of different measures of temporal quality with increasing compression factor and show how appropriate dispersion management and cascading of the post-compression process can be employed to limit the impact of…
We report on the nonlinear temporal compression of mJ energy pulses from a Ti:Sa chirped pulse amplifier system in a multipass cell filled with argon. The pulses are compressed from 30 fs down to 5.3 fs, corresponding to two optical cycles. The post-compressed beam exhibits excellent spatial quality and homogeneity. These results pave the way to robust and energy-scalable compression of Ti:Sa pulses down to the few-cycle regime.
Direct generation of ultrashort, transform-limited pulses in a laser resonator is observed theoretically and experimentally. This constitutes a new type of ultrashort pulse generation in mode-locked lasers: in contrast to the well-known solitons (hyperbolic secant like), dispersion-managed solitons (Gaussian-like), and parabolic pulses plus external compression, ultrashort pulse solutions to the nonlinear wave equations that describe pulse evolution in the laser cavity are observed. Stable ultrashort, transform-limited pulses exist with optical spectrum broader than the gain bandwidth of the a…
We propose an efficient approach to improve few-cycle soliton compression with cascaded quadratic nonlinearities by using an engineered multi-section structure of the nonlinear crystal. By exploiting engineering of the cascaded quadratic nonlinearities, in each section soliton compression with a low effective order is realized, and high-quality few-cycle pulses with large compression factors are feasible. Each subsequent section is designed so that the compressed pulse exiting the previous section experiences an overall effective self-defocusing cubic nonlinearity corresponding to a modest sol…
We present numerical simulations and experimental observations of the spectral expansion of fs-pulses compressing in optical fibers. Using the input pulse frequency chirp we are able to scan through the pulse compression spectra and observe in detail the emergence of negative-frequency resonant radiation (NRR), a recently discovered pulse instability coupling to negative frequencies [Rubino et al., PRL 108, 253901 (2012)]. We observe how the compressing pulse is exciting NRR as long as it overlaps spectrally with the resonant frequency. Furthermore, we observe that optimal pulse compression ca…
We demonstrate the reliable generation of 1-mJ, 31-fs pulses with an average power of 1 kW by post-compression of 200-fs pulses from a coherently combined Yb:fiber laser system in an argon-filled Herriott-type multi-pass cell with an overall compression efficiency of 96%. We also analyze the output beam, revealing essentially no spatio-spectral couplings or beam quality loss.
Gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is used for efficient nonlinear temporal compression of femtosecond laser pulses, two main schemes being direct soliton-effect self-compression, and spectral broadening followed by phase compensation. To obtain stable compressed pulses, it is crucial to avoid decoherence through modulational instability (MI) during spectral broadening. Here we show that changes in dispersion due to spectral anti-crossings between the fundamental core mode and core wall resonances in anti-resonant-guiding hollow-core PCF can strongly alter the MI gain spectrum…
Repeatedly alternating the sign of dispersion along a waveguide substantially increases the bandwidth to input peak power efficiency of supercontinuum generation (SCG). Here, we explore, theoretically and numerically, how to optimize sign-alternating dispersion waveguides for nonlinear pulse compression, so that the compression ratio is maximized. By exploring a previously unknown SCG phase effect, we find emergent phase effects unique to these structures where the spectral phase converges to a parabolic profile independent of uncompensated higher-order dispersion. The combination of an easy t…
We report supercontinuum generation and pulse compression in two stacked multipass cells based on dielectric mirrors. The 230 fs pulses at 1 MHz containing 12 $μ$J were compressed by factor 33 down to 7 fs, corresponding to 1.0 GW peak power and overall transmission of 84 %. The source is particularly interesting for such applications as time-resolved ARPES, photoemission electron microscopy, and nonlinear spectroscopy.
We present a simple and robust technique to retrieve the phase of ultrashort laser pulses, based on a chirped mirror and glass wedges compressor. It uses the compression system itself as a diagnostic tool, thereby making unnecessary the use of complementary diagnostic tools. We used this technique to compress and characterize 7.1 fs laser pulses from an ultrafast laser oscillator.
Few-cycle pulses present an essential tool to track ultrafast dynamics in matter and drive strong field effects. To address photon-hungry applications, high average power lasers are used which, however, cannot directly provide sub-100 fs pulse durations. Post-compression of laser pulses by spectral broadening and dispersion compensation is the most efficient method to overcome this limitation. Here, we demonstrate a notably compact setup which turns a 0.1 GW peak power, picosecond laser into a 2.9 GW peak power, 8.2 fs source. The 120-fold pulse duration shortening is accomplished in a two-sta…
Direct compression of femtosecond optical pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser oscillator was realized with a cholesteric liquid crystal acting as a nonlinear 1D periodic Bragg grating. With a 6-um thick sample, the pulse duration could be compressed from 100 to 48 femtoseconds. Coupled-mode equations for forward and backward waves were employed to simulate the dynamics therein and good agreement between theory and experiment was obtained.
We report design of a tapered fiber that can be used for compression of pulses at different central wavelengths. The proposed fiber is a 3-layer W-type large-mode-area fiber, which has been tapered to transform the mode area from 1700 μm2 to 900 μm2. We determine the exact length of the maximum pulse compression and numerically demonstrate the compression of 250 fs, 100 kW peak power input pulse to 15 fs, 850 kW at 1.55 μm wavelength and 250 fs, 120 kW peak power input pulses to 28 fs, 700 kW and to 46 fs, 500 kW at 1.8 μm and 2 μm wavelengths, respectively. Such a fiber can find wide ranging …
Using numerical simulations, we study propagation of linearly-chirped optical pulses in a homogeneously broadened two-level medium. We pay attention to the three main topics -- validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA), pulse compression, and collisions of counter-propagating pulses. The cases of long and single-cycle pulses are considered and compared with each other. We show that the RWA does not give a correct description of chirped pulse interaction with the medium. The compression of the chirp-free single-cycle pulse is stronger than of the chirped one, while the opposite is true …
We report on the generation of 6.1 mJ, 3.8 fs pulses by the compression of a kHz Ti:sapphire laser in a large-aperture long hollow fiber. In order to find optimal conditions for spectral broadening at high pulse energies, we explore different parameter ranges where ionization or the Kerr effect dominates. After identifying the optimum parameter settings, large spectral broadening at high waveguide transmission is obtained. The intense 1.5-cycle pulses are used for high-harmonic generation in argon and neon.
We study the possibility of efficient self-compression of femtosecond laser pulses in nonlinear media with anomalous dispersion of group velocity during the self-focusing of wave packets with a power several times greater than the critical self-focusing power. The results of qualitative analysis of the evolution of three-dimensional wave packets with the quasi-soliton field distribution are confirmed by the computer simulation. The simulation proves that the considered regime of compression of high-power laser pulses with initial durations of about ten optical cycles is stable relative to fila…
We present a theoretical model and respective numerical simulation of cascaded four-wave mixing of femtosecond pulses in bulk chi(3) media, evidencing the importance of two-dimensional interaction geometries in the efficient generation of frequency-converted beams, and in agreement with the experimental results in terms spectral and spatial distribution and efficiency, demonstrating compression without the need of complex amplitude or phase control.
Pulse compression processing based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in an optical fiber is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Broadband microwave signal is electro-optically modulated onto the pump lightwave that is launched into one end of the fiber. Acoustic wave in the fiber inherits the amplitude and phase information of the pump lightwave and thus the coupling between the acoustic wave and pump lightwave leads to the auto-correlated process of the pump lightwave as well as the modulated microwave signal. Derivation of the SBS coupling equations shows that the short-pul…
Carrier envelope phase stable 4 fs near-IR pulses with 3 mJ energy were generated by spectral broadening of circularly polarized 8 mJ pulses in a differentially pumped 2 m long composite stretched exible hollow ber. The pulses were characterized using both second-harmonic generation frequency-resolved optical gating (SHG-FROG) and SHG d-scan methods
The out-of-phase soliton distribution of the wave field was found for a multicore fiber (MCF) from an even number of cores located in a ring. Its stability is proved both with respect to small wave field perturbations, including azimuthal ones and to small deformations of the MCF structure. As an example of using this soliton distribution, the problem of laser pulse compression in an active MCF is studied. The optimal fiber parameters, the minimum duration of the output pulse, and the compression length have been found, which are in good agreement with the results of numerical simulation. In o…
In this work, we demonstrate post-compression of 1.2 picosecond laser pulses to 13 fs via gas-based multi-pass spectral broadening. Our results yield a single-stage compression factor of about 40 at 200 W in-burst average power and a total compression factor >90 at reduced power. The employed scheme represents a route towards compact few-cycle sources driven by industrial-grade Yb:YAG lasers at high average power.
The output pulses of a commercial high-power femtosecond fiber laser or amplifier are typically around 300-500 fs with a wavelength around 1030 nm and 10s of $μ$J pulse energy. Here we present a numerical study of cascaded quadratic soliton compression of such pulses in LiNbO$_3$ using a type I phase matching configuration. We find that because of competing cubic material nonlinearities compression can only occur in the nonstationary regime, where group-velocity mismatch induced Raman-like nonlocal effects prevent compression to below 100 fs. However, the strong group velocity dispersion impli…
Low peak-power pulse compression in gas-filled Herriott cells in the 2 μm wavelength range
Helmut Schmidt University（赫尔穆特·施密特大学）；Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY（德国电子同步加速器）；n2-Photonics GmbH（n2光子有限公司）；Leibniz University Hannover（汉诺威莱布尼茨大学）
We demonstrate efficient generation of coherent super-octave pulses via a single-stage spectral broadening of a Yb:KGW laser in a single, pressurized, Ne-filled, hollow-core fiber capillary. Emerging pulses spectrally spanning over more than $\sim$1 PHz (250 nm- 1600 nm) at a dynamic range of $\sim$60 dB, and an excellent beam quality open the door to combining Yb:KGW lasers with modern light field synthesis techniques. Compression of a fraction of the generated supercontinuum to intense (8 fs, $\sim$2.4 cycle, $\sim$650 $μ$J) pulses allows convenient use of these novel laser sources in strong…
The generation of few-cycle pulses with controlled waveforms in the mid-infrared spectral region is a long-standing challenge but is expected to enable a new generation of high-field physics experiments, uncovering intricate physical phenomena. Successful generation of such optical pulses is limited by the tremendous spectral width required to withstand few-cycle pulses in the mid-IR correlated with the need to tightly control the spectral phase over such a broad bandwidth. Here, we present the first demonstration of sub-three cycle optical pulses at 3.1 μm central wavelength using for the fir…
We experimentally demonstrate that the bandwidth of single photons laser pulse is compressed by a factor of 58 in a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguide chip. A chirped single photons laser pulse and an oppositely chirped classical laser pulse are employed to produce a narrowband single photon pulse with new frequency through sum-frequency generation. In our experiment, the frequency and bandwidth of single photons at 1550 nm are simultaneously converted. Our results mark a critical step towards the realization of coherent photonic interface between quantum communication at 1550…
Infrared femtosecond laser pulses are important tools both in strong-field physics, driving X-ray high-harmonic generation, and as the basis for widely tuneable, if inefficient, ultrafast sources in the visible and ultraviolet. Although anomalous material dispersion simplifies compression to few-cycle pulses, attosecond pulses in the infrared have remained out of reach. We demonstrate soliton self-compression of 1800 nm laser pulses in hollow capillary fibers to sub-cycle envelope duration (2 fs) with 27 GW peak power, corresponding to attosecond field transients. In the same system, we genera…
The physics of strong-field applications requires driver laser pulses that are both energetic and extremely short. Whereas optical amplifiers, laser and parametric, boost the energy, their gain bandwidth restricts the attainable pulse duration, requiring additional nonlinear spectral broadening to enable few or even single cycle compression and a corresponding peak power increase. In the mid-IR wavelength range that is critically important for scaling the ponderomotive energy in strong-field interactions, we demonstrate a remarkably simple energy-efficient and scalable soliton-like pulse compr…
We report on the generation of a train of ~ 2 ps, 10 um laser pulses via multiple four-wave mixing and compression of an infrared laser beat-wave propagating in the negative group velocity dispersion region of bulk GaAs and a combination of GaAs and NaCl. The use of a 200 ps, 106 GHz beat-wave, produced by combining laser pulses amplified on the 10P(20) and 10P(16) transition of a CO2 laser, provides a novel method for generating high-power, picosecond, mid-IR laser pulses at a high repetition rate. By using 165 and 882 GHz beat-waves we show that cascaded phase-mismatched difference frequency…
We combine soliton dynamics in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers with a state-of-the-art fiber laser to realize a turn-key system producing few-fs pulses at 8 MHz repetition rate at pump energies as low as 220 nJ. Furthermore, by exploiting the soliton self-frequency shift in a second hydrogen-filled hollow-core fiber, we efficiently generate pulses as short as 22 fs, continuously tunable from 1100 nm to 1474 nm.
We perform a post-compression of high energy pulses by using optical-field ionization of low pressure helium gas in a guided geometry. We apply this approach to a TW chirped-pulse-amplification based Ti:Sapphire laser chain and show that spectral broadening can be controlled both with the input pulse energy and gas pressure. Under optimized conditions, we generate 10 fs pulses at TW level directly under vacuum and demonstrate a high stability of the post compressed pulse duration. These high energy post-compressed pulses are thereafter used to perform high harmonic generation in a loose focusi…
We present nonlinear pulse compression of a high-power SESAM-modelocked thin-disk laser (TDL) using an Ar-filled hypocycloid-core Kagome Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber (HC-PCF). The output of the modelocked Yb:YAG TDL with 127 W average power, a pulse repetition rate of 7 MHz, and a pulse duration of 740 fs was spectrally broadened 16-fold while propagating in a Kagome HC-PCF containing 13 bar of static Argon gas. Subsequent compression tests performed using 8.4% of the full available power resulted in a pulse duration as short as 88 fs using the spectrally broadened output from the fiber.…
We propose a new architecture, double-pass multiple-plate continuum (DPMPC), for nonlinear pulse compression. In addition to smaller footprint, a double-pass configuration is designed to achieve substantial bandwidth broadening without incurring noticeable higher-order dispersion, thus improving the temporal contrast over those of traditional single-pass geometry when only quadratic spectral phase can be compensated. In our proof-of-concept experiment, 187~$μ$J, 190-fs Yb-based laser pulse is compressed to 20~fs with high throughput (75%), high Strehl ratio (0.76) and excellent beam homogeneit…
We demonstrate, by theory and experiment, the ultrafast tilting of the dispersion curve of a photonic-crystal waveguide following the absorption of a femtosecond pump pulse. By shaping the pump-beam cross section with a nanometric shadow mask, different waveguide eigenmodes acquire different spatial overlap with the perturbing pump, leading to a local flattening of the dispersion by up to 11 %. We find that such partial mode perturbation can be used to adiabatically compress the spectrum of a light pulse traveling through the waveguide.
We report generation of a femtosecond supercontinuum extending from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared and detection of its carrier-envelope phase variation by f-to-2f interferometry. The spectrum is generated in a gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber where soliton dynamics allows CEP-stable self-compression of OPCPA pump pulses at 800 nm to a duration of 1.7 optical cycles, followed by dispersive wave emission. The source provides up to 1 μJ of pulse energy at 800 kHz repetition rate resulting in 0.8 W of average power, and can be extremely useful for example in strong-field physic…
We report numerical and experimental studies of dissipative-soliton-resonance (DSR) in a fiber laser with a nonlinear optical loop mirror. The DSR pulse presents temporally a flat-top profile and a clamped peak power. Its spectrum has a rectangle profile with characteristic steep edges. It shows a unique behavior as pulse energy increases: The rectangle part of the spectrum is unchanged while the newly emerging spectrum sits on the center part and forms a peak. Experimental observations match well with the numerical results. Moreover, compression of the DSR pulses is both numerically and exper…
Over the past years, ultrafast lasers with average powers in the 100 W range have become a mature technology, with a multitude of applications in science and technology. Nonlinear temporal compression of these lasers to few- or even single-cycle duration is often essential, yet still hard to achieve, in particular at high repetition rates. Here we report a two-stage system for compressing pulses from a 1030 nm ytterbium fiber laser to single-cycle durations with 5 $μ$J output pulse energy at 9.6 MHz repetition rate. In the first stage, the laser pulses are compressed from 340 to 25 fs by spect…
Optical soliton dynamics can cause the extreme alteration of the temporal and spectral shape of a propagating light pulse. They occur at up to kilowatt peak powers in glass-core optical fibres and the gigawatt level in gas-filled microstructured hollow-core fibres. Here we demonstrate optical soliton dynamics in large-core hollow capillary fibres. This enables scaling of soliton effects by several orders of magnitude to the multi-mJ energy and terawatt peak power level. We experimentally demonstrate two key soliton effects. First, we observe self-compression to sub-cycle pulses and infer the c…
We experimentally demonstrate simultaneous spatial and temporal compression in the propagation of light pulses in multimode nonlinear optical fibers. We reveal that the spatial beam self-cleaning recently discovered in graded-index multimode fibers is accompanied by significant temporal reshaping and up to four-fold shortening of the injected sub-nanosecond laser pulses. Since the nonlinear coupling among the modes strongly depends on the instantaneous power, we explore the entire range of the nonlinear dynamics with a single optical pulse, where the optical power is continuously varied across…
Light scattering in inhomogeneous media induces wavefront distortions which pose an inherent limitation in many optical applications. Examples range from microscopy and nanosurgery to astronomy. In recent years, ongoing efforts have made the correction of spatial distortions possible by wavefront shaping techniques. However, when ultrashort pulses are employed scattering induces temporal distortions which hinder their use in nonlinear processes such as in multiphoton microscopy and quantum control experiments. Here we show that correction of both spatial and temporal distortions can be attaine…
