Abstract
We present a 0.2 TW sub-two-cycle 1.8 µm carrier-envelope-phase stable source based on two-stage pulse compression by filamentation for driving high-order harmonic generation extending beyond the oxygen K absorption edge. The 1 kHz repetition rate, high temporal resolution enabled by the short 11.8 fs driving pulse duration, and bright high-order harmonics generated in helium make this an attractive source for solid-state and molecular-dynamics studies.
Highlights
High-order harmonic generation (HHG) based sources have recently achieved unprecedented, sub-femtosecond, temporal resolution in transient absorption measurements [1,2,3]
We present a 0.2 TW sub-two-cycle 1.8 μm carrier-envelope-phase stable source based on two-stage pulse compression by filamentation for driving high-order harmonic generation extending beyond the oxygen K absorption edge
While broadband optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifiers based on BiBO nonlinear crystals [18] or parametric amplification in the Fourier-plane [19] have been previously successfully demonstrated, here we show that high flux HHG can be achieved using a much simpler and robust pulse compression method and a conventional BBO based Type-II optical parametric amplifier
Summary
High-order harmonic generation (HHG) based sources have recently achieved unprecedented, sub-femtosecond, temporal resolution in transient absorption measurements [1,2,3]. The recent advancements in high power laser/parametric sources have achieved sufficient photon flux (kHz repetition rates) for performing time-resolved transient absorption measurements in the water window range [10] and techniques, such as attosecond streaking [11,12,13], have recently been extended to this spectral range enabling the generation of the shortest attosecond pulses ever produced [14]. Laser filaments are self-sustained light structures of 0.1 to 1 mm in diameter, spanning over hundreds of meters in length and producing a low-density plasma (1015 −1017 cm−3) along their path They stem from the dynamic balance between Kerr self-focusing and defocusing from the self-generated plasma and/or non-linear polarization saturation [17]. The long wavelength driving pulses used in our scheme allow efficient and scalable filament-based pulse compression as discussed in Section 3 without the detrimental effects of plasma formation
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