Abstract
We report on the design, fabrication and testing of novel types of low-dispersion axicons for the adaptive shaping of ultrashort laser pulses. An overview is given on the basic geometries and operating principles of our purely reflective adaptive MEMS-type devices based on thermal or piezoelectric actuation. The flexible formation of nondiffracting beams at pulse durations down to a few oscillations of the optical field enables new applications in optical communication, pulse diagnostics, laser-matter interaction and particle manipulation. As an example, we show first promising results of adaptive autocorrelation. The combination of excellent pulse transfer, self-reconstruction properties and propagation invariance of nondiffracting beams with an adaptive approach promises to extend the field of practical applications significantly.
Highlights
With the commercial availability of ultrashort pulse lasers with pulse durations as short as a few femtoseconds and large bandwidths, science and industry get powerful tools for studying and controlling physical and chemical processes at extreme time scales and to realize ultrafast optical communication systems
We report on the state of the art of designing and realizing novel types of tunable axicons for ultrafast laser applications based on reflective micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
Most of the previous work on adaptively shaping ultrashort laser pulses has been done with spatial light modulators (SLMs) and digital mirror devices (DMDs)
Summary
With the commercial availability of ultrashort pulse lasers with pulse durations as short as a few femtoseconds and large bandwidths, science and industry get powerful tools for studying and controlling physical and chemical processes at extreme time scales and to realize ultrafast optical communication systems. Important field of applications are biomedical treatment and analysis. All of these emerging developments, require the laser sources and appropriate devices for shaping, guiding and diagnosing the laser radiation in space, time and spectrum. We run a long-standing research program and combine engineering, adaptive optics and laser physics which proved to be a fruitful approach to overcome the intrinsic limitations of conventional beam shapers. We report on the state of the art of designing and realizing novel types of tunable axicons for ultrafast laser applications based on reflective micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
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