Abstract
A single-cycle laser pulse was generated using a two-stage compressor and characterized using a pulse characterization technique based on tunnelling ionization. A 25-fs, 800-nm laser pulse was compressed to 5.5 fs using a gas-filled hollow-core fibre and a set of chirped mirrors. The laser pulse was further compressed, down to the single-cycle limit by propagation through multiple fused-silica plates and another set of chirped mirrors. The two-stage compressor mitigates the development of higher-order dispersion during spectral broadening. Thus, a single-cycle pulse was generated by compensating the second-order dispersion using chirped mirrors. The duration of the single-cycle pulse was 2.5 fs, while its transform-limited duration was 2.2 fs. A continuum extreme ultraviolet spectrum was obtained through high-harmonic generation without applying any temporal gating technique. The continuum spectrum was shown to have a strong dependence on the carrier-envelope phase of the laser pulse, confirming the generation of a single-cycle pulse.
Highlights
Ultrashort laser pulses have become essential tools for studying ultrafast light-matter interactions[1,2,3,4,5]
We present a two-stage compressor developed for the generation of a single-cycle laser pulse
Since the spectral broadening increased with Ne pressure, the transform-limited pulse duration τTL gradually decreases with pressure up to 3400 torr
Summary
Ultrashort laser pulses have become essential tools for studying ultrafast light-matter interactions[1,2,3,4,5]. The multiple glass plates were arranged near the focus so that the self-focusing of the laser beam was balanced by the divergence of the laser beam In this way, it was possible to compress the laser pulse down to the few-cycle limit when the second-order dispersion is compensated. The two-stage compressor consists of a hollow-core fibre and multiple thin glass plates; the spectrum of a laser pulse is broadened due to the Kerr effect in both cases, which universally occurs for all wavelengths. The arrangement of the two-stage compressor offers sufficient spectral broadening for the generation of a single-cycle laser pulse It is more efficient than a two-stage compressor that uses two hollow-core fibres[31], because the second stage of compression using multiple plates is insensitive to the alignment of the laser beam. The temporal characterization of the single-cycle laser pulse was performed using the tunnelling ionization with perturbation for the time-domain observation of an electric field (TIPTOE) method[32]
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