Abstract
ABSTRACT Contemporary ultrafast science requires reliable sources of high-energy few-cycle light pulses. Currently two methods are capable of generating such pulses: post compression of short laser pulses and optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). Here we give a comprehensive overview on the post-compression technology based on optical Kerr-effect or ionization, with particular emphasis on energy and power scaling. Relevant types of post compression techniques are discussed including free propagation in bulk materials, multiple-plate continuum generation, multi-pass cells, filaments, photonic-crystal fibers, hollow-core fibers and self-compression techniques. We provide a short theoretical overview of the physics as well as an in-depth description of existing experimental realizations of post compression, especially those that can provide few-cycle pulse duration with mJ-scale pulse energy. The achieved experimental performances of these methods are compared in terms of important figures of merit such as pulse energy, pulse duration, peak power and average power. We give some perspectives at the end to emphasize the expected future trends of this technology.
Highlights
The shortest events the mankind could ever generate are light pulses
In the visible to near-infrared spectral range, they have a duration of a few femtose conds [1], which paved the way to the emergence of attosecond science by enabling the generation of XUV pulses of several tens of attoseconds duration via high-harmonic generation [2,3]
Stretched flexible hollow-core fibers In Sect. 4.1 we showed that for energy scaling one needs to increase both the effective mode area, which is proportional to the bore radius a, and the waveguide length L
Summary
The shortest events the mankind could ever generate are light pulses. In the visible to near-infrared spectral range, they have a duration of a few femtose conds [1], which paved the way to the emergence of attosecond science by enabling the generation of XUV pulses of several tens of attoseconds duration via high-harmonic generation [2,3]. Most of the frequently used lasers have too narrow gain bandwidth due to the finite widths of the energy levels of the amplifying medium, the spectrum of their pulses needs to be broadened first before they can be compressed to few-cycle duration. This technique is called post compression (compression after amplification) which is overviewed in this paper.
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