Propagation of a weak probe pulse through a $Λ$ system in a resonant gain configuration is investigated. We employ the control field intensity that permits the amplification of probe pulse during propagation, without instability at two photon resonance. Posterior to amplification, a broadened probe pulse is obtained, which retains its initial pulse shape and travels at the speed of light in vacuum, without experiencing any delay, absorption, and dispersion. The salient feature of this technique lies in the fact that in addition to preserving the initial pulse shape, it also ensures stable pulse propagation after amplification. It also works for arbitrary probe pulse shapes.
We demonstrate a narrow band phase sensitive amplifier in the pump degenerate configuration which employs ps pump pulses. Control of the amplifier bandwidth is achieved via changes of the pump spectral width. A phase sensitive gain between -6 and 6 decibels, with an overall system gain of 28dB was demonstrated.
We present a Ho:YLF Chirped-Pulse Amplification (CPA) laser for pumping a longwave infrared Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplifier (OPCPA) at a 1 kHz repetition rate. By utilizing a Ti:Sapphire laser as a frontend, 5-μJ seed pulses at 2051 nm laser pulse are generated in a Dual-Chirp Optical Parametric Amplifier (DC-OPA), which are amplified to 28 mJ pulses with a pulse duration of 6.8 ps. The scheme offers a potential driver for two-color (800 nm and 8 μm) high harmonic generation with an increased keV X-ray photon flux.
Compensation of nonlinear phase shifts with third-order dispersion: fiber stretchers can out-perform grating stretchers in short-pulse fiber amplifiers
We experimentally demonstrate intensity amplification of repetitive picosecond optical pulses with an input-to-output gain up to 5.5 dB using a passive Talbot amplifier. Through the dispersion-induced temporal Talbot effect, the amplifier uses electro-optic phase modulation and a low-loss dispersive medium to exploit and coherently redistribute the energy of the original pulse train into fewer, replica, amplified pulses. In addition, we show how our passive amplifier mitigates the pulse train timing-jitter and pulse-to-pulse intensity fluctuations above a specific cutoff frequency.
We have optimized the input pulse width and injection time to achieve the highest possible output pulse energy in a double-pass laser amplifier. For this purpose, we have extended the modified Frantz-Nodvik equation by simultaneously including both spontaneous emission and pump energy variation. The maximum achieved fluence of the output pulse was 2.4 J/$cm^2$. An input pulse energy of 1 J could be maximally amplified to output pulse energy of 12.17 J, where the optimal values of the pulse width and injection time of the input pulse were 168 μs and 10 μs, respectively, with the effective pump …
We outline an approach for improving the temporal contrast of a high-intensity laser system by $>$8 orders of magnitude using non-collinear sum-frequency generation with the signal and idler of an optical parametric amplifier. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by cleaning pulses from a millijoule-level chirped-pulse amplification system to provide $>$10$^{12}$ intensity contrast relative to all pre-pulses and amplified spontaneous emission $>$5~ps prior to the main pulse. The output maintains percent-level energy stability on the time scales of a typical user experiment at our…
We demonstrate the ability to control quantum coherent Rabi-oscillations in a room-temperature quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) by shaping the light pulses that trigger them. The experiments described here show that when the excitation is resonant with the short wavelength slope of the SOA gain spectrum, a linear frequency chirp affects its ability to trigger Rabi-oscillations within the SOA: A negative chirp inhibits Rabi-oscillations whereas a positive chirp can enhance them, relative to the interaction of a transform limited pulse. The experiments are confirmed by a numeric…
Sub 100-fs, 5.2-$μ$m ZGP Parametric Amplifier Driven by a ps Ho:YAG Chirped Pulse Amplifier and its application to high harmonic generation
Vienna University of Technology（维也纳工业大学）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；Menlo Systems GmbH（Menlo Systems有限公司）；University of Erlangen-Nuremberg（埃尔朗根-纽伦堡大学）；Center for Physical Sciences & Technology（物理科学和技术中心）
We study numerically the formation of cascading solitons when femtosecond optical pulses are launched into a fiber amplifier with less energy than required to form a soliton of equal duration. As the pulse is amplified, cascaded fundamental solitons are created at different distances, without soliton fission, as each fundamental soliton moves outside the gain bandwidth through the Raman-induced spectral shifts. As a result, each input pulse creates multiple, temporally separated, ultrashort pulses of different wavelengths at the amplifier output. The number of pulses depends not only on the to…
We present a comprehensive study of laser pulse amplification with respect to operation regimes, gain dynamics, and highly stable operation points of Ho:YLF regenerative amplifiers (RAs). The findings are expected to be more generic than for this specific case. Operation regimes are distinguished with respect to pulse energy and the appearance of pulse instability, and are studied as a function of the repetition rate, seed energy, and pump intensity. The corresponding gain dynamics are presented, identifying highly stable operation points related to high gain build -up during pumping and high …
We report a multi-microjoule, ultra-broadband mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier based on a GaSe nonlinear crystal pumped at ~2 μm. The generated idler pulse has a flat spectrum spanning from 4.5 to 13.3 μm at -3 dB and 4.2 to 16 μm in the full spectral range, with a central wavelength of 8.8 μm. The proposed scheme supports a sub-cycle Fourier-transform-limited pulse width. A (2+1)-dimensional numerical simulation is employed to reproduce the obtained idler spectrum. To our best knowledge, this is the broadest -3 dB spectrum ever obtained by optical parametric amplifiers in this spectr…
We report on the design and whole characterization of low-noise and affordable-cost Yb-doped double-clad fiber amplifiers operating at room temperature in the near-infrared spectral region at pulse repetition rate of 160 MHz. Two different experimental configurations are discussed. In the first one, a broadband seed radiation with a transform limited pulse duration of 71 fs, an optical spectrum of 20 nm wide at around 1040 nm, and 20 mW average power is adopted. In the second configuration, the seed radiation is constituted by stretched pulses with a time duration as long as 170 ps, with a 5-n…
An ultrafast fiber chirped-pulse amplifier comprising 8 coherently combined amplifier channels is presented. The laser delivers 1 kW average power at 1 mJ pulse energy and 260 fs pulse duration. Excellent beam quality and low noise performance are confirmed. The laser has proven suitable for demanding scientific applications. Further power scaling is possible right away using even more amplifier channels
We describe a system for generating frequency-chirped and amplitude-shaped pulses on time scales from sub-nanosecond to ten nanoseconds. The system starts with cw diode-laser light at 780 nm and utilizes fiber-based electro-optical phase and intensity modulators, driven by an arbitrary waveform generator, to generate the shaped pulses. These pulses are subsequently amplified to several hundred mW with a tapered amplifier in a delayed double-pass configuration. Frequency chirps up to 5 GHz in 2 ns and pulse widths as short as 0.15 ns have been realized.
Here, we demonstrate all-fiber direct amplification of 11 picosecond pulses from a gain-switched laser diode at 1063nm. The diode was driven at a repetition rate of 40MHz and delivered 13$μ$W of fiber-coupled average output power. For the low output pulse energy of 0.33pJ we have designed a multi-stage core pumped preamplifier based on single clad Yb-doped fibers in order to keep the contribution of undesired amplified spontaneous emission as low as possible and to minimize temporal and spectral broadening. After the preamplifier we reduced the 40MHz repetition rate to 1MHz using a fiber coupl…
We demonstrated all-fiber amplification of 11 ps pulses from a gain-switched laser diode at 1064 nm. The diode was driven at a repetition rate of 40 MHz and delivered 13 $μ$W of fiber-coupled average output power. For the low output pulse energy of 325 fJ we have designed a multi-stage core pumped pre-amplifier in order to keep the contribution of undesired amplified spontaneous emission as low as possible. By using a novel time-domain approach for determining the power spectral density ratio (PSD) of signal to noise, we identified the optimal working point for our pre-amplifier. After the pre…
We present a 100 kHz optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier (OPCPA) developed for strong-field attosecond physics and soft-X-ray transient absorption experiments. The system relies on noncollinear potassium titanyl arsenate (KTA) booster OPCPAs and is pumped by a 240 W, 1.1 ps Yb:YAG Innoslab chirped pulse laser amplifier. Two optically synchronized infrared output beams are simultaneously available: a 430 μJ, 51 fs, carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stable beam at 1.55 μm and an angular-dispersion-compensated, 125 μJ, 73 fs beam at 3.1 μm.
Lasers capable of generating attosecond X-ray pulses in the water window (282 to 533 eV) through high-order harmonic generation are normally based on inefficient, multi-stage optical parametric amplifiers or optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers pumped by femtosecond or picosecond lasers. Here we report a very efficient single amplification stage laser based on traditional chirped pulse amplification capable of producing 3 mJ, near-transform limited 44 fs (<6 cycles), 1 kHz pulses centered at 2.5 micrometer. The 68 GW peak power is the highest value ever reached at this wavelength. In or…
Taking advantages of ultra-narrow bandwidth and high noise rejection performance of the Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), simultaneously with the coherent amplification of atomic stimulated emission, a stimulated amplified Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (SAFADOF) at cesium 1470 nm is realized. The SAFADOF is able to significantly amplify very weak laser signals and reject noise in order to obtain clean signals in strong background. Experiment results show that, for a weak signal of 50 pW, the gain factor can be larger than 25000 (44 dB) within a bandwidth as nar…
We report on the generation of intense extreme ultraviolet (EUV) supercontinuum with photon energies spanning from 35 eV to 50 eV (i. e., supporting an isolated attosecond pulse with a duration of ~271 as) by loosely focusing 35 fs, 11 mJ pulses from a femtosecond laser amplifier into a 10-mm long gas cell filled with krypton gas. The dramatic change of spectral and temporal properties of the driver pulses after passing through the gas cell indicates that propagation effects play a significant role in promoting the generation of the EUV supercontinuum.
We report on a μJ-scale mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier (OPA) based on the recently developed wide-bandgap orthorhombic crystal, BaGa4S7 (BGS), and directly compare its performance to that of LiGaS2 (LGS) in the same OPA setup. The source is based on a single OPA stage amplifying supercontinuum seed pulses with a quantum efficiency of 29{\%} at an idler wavelength of 10 μm, featuring nominally carrier-envelope phase-stable pulses. As a result of pumping the OPA directly at 1 μm, the overall conversion efficiency far exceeds that of traditional schemes based on OPA's followed by diffe…
High-energy, carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stable, sub-cycle, mid-infrared (mid-IR) pulses can provide unique opportunities of exploring phase-sensitive strong-field light-matter interactions in atoms, molecules, and solids. In the mid-IR wavelength, the ponderomotive energy of laser pulses is dramatically increased (versus the visible/near-infrared) and, therefore, the Keldysh parameter is much smaller than unity even at relatively modest laser intensities. This enables to study the sub-cycle electron dynamics in solids via high-harmonic generation (HHG) without damage. One can also control th…
The Free-Electron Laser (FEL) FLASH offers the worldwide still unique capability to study ultrafast processes with high-flux, high-repetition rate XUV and soft X-ray pulses. The vast majority of experiments at FLASH are of pump-probe type. Many of them rely on optical ultrafast lasers. Here, a novel FEL facility laser is reported which combines high average power output from Yb:YAG amplifiers with spectral broadening in a Herriott-type multi-pass cell and subsequent pulse compression to sub-100 fs durations. Compared to other facility lasers employing optical parametric amplification, the new …
We present a comprehensive model for predicting the full performance of a second harmonic generationoptical parametric amplification system that aims at enhancing the temporal contrast of laser pulses. The model simultaneously takes into account all the main parameters at play in the system such as the group velocity mismatch, the beam divergence, the spectral content, the pump depletion, and the length of the nonlinear crystals. We monitor the influence of the initial parameters of the input pulse and the interdependence of the two related non-linear processes on the performance of the system…
We describe a fiber Raman amplifier for nanosecond and sub-nanosecond pulses centered around 1260 nm. The amplification takes place inside a 4.5-m-long polarization-maintaining phosphorus-doped fiber, pumped at 1080 nm by 3-ns-long pulses with a repetition rate of 200 kHz and up to 1.75 kW peak power. The input seed pulses are of sub-mW peak-power and minimal duration of 0.25 ns, carved off a continuous-wave laser with sub-MHz linewidth. We obtain linearly-polarized output pulses with peak-powers of up to 1.4 kW, corresponding to peak-power conversion efficiency of over 80%. An ultrahigh small…
We describe two noncollinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) systems pumped by either the second (515 nm) or the third (343 nm) harmonic of an Yb:KGW amplifier, respectively. Pulse durations as short as 6.8 fs are readily obtained by compression with commercially available chirped mirrors. The availability of both second and third harmonic for NOPA pumping allows for gap-free tuning from 520 to 980 nm. The use of an intermediate NOPA to generate seed light at 780 nm extends the tuning range of the third-harmonic pumped NOPA towards 450 nm.
In this paper, we report an experimental study of noise features of polarized and unpolarized amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) with narrow optical bandwidth, registered from a conventional low-doped erbium fiber. We demonstrate that ASE noise can be considered as train of Gaussian-like pulses with random magnitudes, widths, and inter- pulse intervals. The statistical properties of these three parameters of noise pulsing are analyzed. We also present the results on the influence of ASE noise upon optical spectrum broadening, produced by self-phase modulation at propagating along communicati…
Center for Free-Electron Laser Science CFEL, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY（自由电子激光科学中心，德国电子同步辐射研究所）；University of Hamburg（汉堡大学）；Antalya Bilim University（安塔利亚科学大学）
The self-referenced spectral interferometry (SRSI) technique, which is usually used for microjoule-level femtosecond pulses characterization, is improved to characterize weak femtosecond pulses with nanojoule based on the transient-grating effect. Both femtosecond pulses from an amplifier with 3 nJ per pulse at 1 kHz repetition rates and femtosecond pulses from an oscillator with less than 0.5 nJ per pulse at 84 MHz repetition rates are successfully characterized. Furthermore, through a special design, the optical setup of the device is even smaller than a palm which will makes it simple and c…
We demonstrate a new regime for mid-infrared optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) based on achromatic quasi-phase-matching. Our mid-infrared OPCPA system is based on collinear aperiodically poled lithium niobate (APPLN) pre-amplifiers and a non-collinear PPLN power amplifier. The idler output has a bandwidth of 800 nm centered at 3.4 $μ$m. After compression, we obtain a pulse duration of 44.2 fs and a pulse energy of 21.8 $μ$J at a repetition rate of 50 kHz. We explain the wide applicability of the non-collinear QPM amplification scheme we used, including how it can enable oc…
We demonstrate efficient pulse-energy extraction from a partly-quenched erbium-doped aluminosilicate fiber amplifier. This has a high erbium-concentration, which allows for short devices with reduced nonlinear distortions, but which also results in partial quenching and thus significant unsaturable absorption, even though the fiber is still able to amplify. Although the quenching degrades the average-power efficiency, the pulse energy remains high, and our results point to an increasingly promising outcome for short pulses. Furthermore, unlike unquenched fibers, the conversion efficiency impro…
A power enhancement optical cavity is a compelling means of realizing a pulsed laser with a high peak power and high repetition frequency, which is not feasible using a simple amplifier scheme. However, a precise feedback system is necessary for maintaining the narrow resonance condition of the optical cavity; this has become a major technical issue in developing such cavities. We have developed a new approach that does not require any active feedback system, by placing the cavity in the outer loop of a laser amplifier. We report on the first demonstration of a mode-locked pulse oscillation us…
We study the interplay between coherent light-matter interactions and non-resonant pulse propagation effects when ultra-short pulses propagate in room-temperature quantum-dot (QD) semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). The signatures observed on a pulse envelope after propagating in a transparent SOA, when coherent Rabi-oscillations are absent, highlight the contribution of two-photon absorption (TPA), and its accompanying Kerr-like effect, as well as of linear dispersion, to the modification of the pulse complex electric field profile. These effects are incorporated into our previously deve…
In its usual implementation, the Raman amplifier features only one pump carrier frequency. However, pulses with well-separated frequencies can also be Raman amplified while compressed in time. Amplification with frequency-separated pumps is shown to hold even in the highly nonlinear, pump-depletion regime, as derived through a fluid model, and demonstrated via particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The resulting efficiency is similar to single-frequency amplifiers, but, due to the beat-wave waveform of both the pump lasers and the amplified seed pulses, these amplifiers feature higher seed intens…
An optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier fully based on Yb lasers at 500 kHz is described. Passive optical-synchronization is achieved between a fiber laser-pumped white-light and a 515 nm pump produced with a 200 W picosecond Yb:YAG InnoSlab amplifier. An output power up to 19.7 W with long-term stability of 0.3% is demonstrated for wavelength tunable pulses between 680 nm and 900 nm and spectral stability of 0.2%; 16.5 W can be achieved with a bandwidth supporting 5.4 fs pulses. We demonstrate compression of 30 microjoule pulses to sub-20 fs duration with a prism compressor, suitable fo…
We demonstrate a single-stage, multipass Ti:sapphire amplifier capable of delivering sub-13 fs, 3.2 mJ pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate. Gaussian filters are used to suppress the gain-narrowing effect, thereby enabling the achievement of an ultrabroadband flat-top spectrum with a FWHM > 130 nm. The carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of the output pulses is actively stabilized via the feed-forward scheme (for the oscillator) and a fast 1 kHz f-to-2f interferometer, which corrects the amplifier-induced CEP drift. The single-shot 75 h CEP measurement yielded rms noise of <150 mrad.
We present an ultrafast all-optical gated amplifier, or transistor, consisting of a forest of ZnO nanowire lasers. A gate light pulse creates a dense electron-hole plasma and excites laser action inside the nanowires. Source light traversing the nanolaser forest is amplified, partly as it is guided through the nanowires, and partly as it propagates diffusively through the forest. We have measured transmission increases at the drain up to a factor 34 for 385-nm light. Time-resolved amplification measurements show that the lasing is rapidly self-quenching, yielding pulse responses as short as 1.…
Ultrafast lasers are becoming increasingly widespread in science and industry alike. Fiber-based ultrafast laser sources are especially attractive because of their compactness, alignment-free setups, and potentially low costs. However, confining short pulses within a fiber core leads to high intensities, which drive a host of nonlinear effects. While these phenomena and their interactions greatly complicate the design of such systems, they can also provide opportunities for engineering new capabilities. Here, we report a new fiber amplification regime distinguished by the use of a dynamically-…
In the context of the Lamb shift measurement in muonic helium we developed a thin-disk laser composed of a Q-switched oscillator and a multi-pass amplifier delivering pulses of 150 mJ at a pulse duration of 100 ns. Its peculiar requirements are stochastic trigger and short delay time (< 500 ns) between trigger and optical output. The concept of the thin-disk laser allows for energy and power scaling with high efficiency. However the single pass gain is small (about 1.2). Hence a multi-pass scheme with precise mode matching for large beam waists (w = 2 mm) is required. Instead of using the stan…
