High-energy continuum generation in an array of thin plates pumped by tunable femtosecond IR pulses

Abstract

We report the generation of octave-spanning supercontinuum pulses in an arrangement of thin transparent plates pumped by 60 fs infrared pulses tunable from 1.2 to 1.75 $$\upmu \mathrm{m}$$ . We demonstrate that the multiple plate technique allows scaling up the energy of the continuum to the level of hundreds of $$\upmu \mathrm{J}$$ while avoiding optical damage and beam breakup due to multiple filamentation. We investigate the spatial and temporal structures of the continuum by performing XFROG and frequency-resolved angular spectra measurements and confirm that the continuum wave packet is well-behaved in time and space and possesses an estimated spectral energy density in excess of 10 nJ/nm throughout the range, which exceeds that of continua generated in bulk solids by more than two orders of magnitude. Finally, we demonstrate for the first time that the carrier-envelope phase stability of the multi-plate continuum is comparable to that of a continuum generated in a bulk medium.