Compression of picosecond pulses from a thin-disk laser to 30fs at 4W average power.

Bo-Han Chen,Peter Simon,Tamas Nagy,Dominik Ehberger,Peter Baum,Martin Kretschmar,Andreas Blumenstein

doi:10.1364/oe.26.003861

Abstract

We investigate two approaches for the spectral broadening and compression of 1-ps long pulses of a thin-disk laser amplifier running at 50 kHz repetition rate at 1030 nm wavelength. We find that with a single, 2.66-m long stretched flexible hollow fiber filled with xenon gas, Fourier transform limited output pulse duration of 66 fs can be directly reached. For larger pulse shortening, we applied a hybrid cascaded approach involving a BBO-based pre-compressor and a long hollow fiber. We could achieve 33-times temporal shortening of 1-ps pulses down to a duration of 30 fs at an overall efficiency of ~29% with an output power level of 3.7 W. These results demonstrate the potential of stretched flexible fibers with their free length scalability for shortening laser pulses of moderate peak power.

Highlights

There is a growing demand for high-average-power, high-repetition-rate, sub-30 fs laser sources for a broad range of applications, e.g. terahertz technology, coincidence analysis in attosecond pump-probe measurements or ultrashort electron pulse generation
We investigate two approaches for the spectral broadening and compression of 1ps long pulses of a thin-disk laser amplifier running at 50 kHz repetition rate at 1030 nm wavelength
We find that a single, 2.66-meter long stretched flexible hollow fiber setup can produce a substantial spectral broadening despite the unfavorably low peak power of the input pulses

Summary

Introduction

There is a growing demand for high-average-power, high-repetition-rate, sub-30 fs laser sources for a broad range of applications, e.g. terahertz technology, coincidence analysis in attosecond pump-probe measurements or ultrashort electron pulse generation. The SF-HCF technology promises an appealing opportunity for directly compressing the ps, sub-ps pulses of diode-pumped solidstate (DPSS) or fiber lasers to sub-30 fs duration We need such pulses for the efficient generation of THz radiation by optical rectification or via a non-collinear optical parametric amplifier [17], in order to compress electron pulses in time [18] for sub-cycle waveform electron microscopy [19] or for driving atomic-scale electron dynamics in condensed matter [20]. For these purposes 30 fs pulse duration is optimal in order to achieve high signal-tonoise ratio but no sample damage. Beyond that such pulses are attractive for applications, the results reveal the further perspective of our approach

Single-stage spectral broadening

Conclusions