Indirect high-bandwidth stabilization of carrier-envelope phase of a high-energy, low-repetition-rate laser

Abstract

We demonstrate a method of stabilizing the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of low-repetition-rate, high-energy femtosecond laser systems such as TW-PW class lasers. A relatively weak high-repetition-rate (~1 kHz) reference pulse copropagates with a low-repetition-rate (10 Hz) high-energy pulse, which are s- and p-polarized, respectively. Using a Brewster angle window, the reference pulse is separated after the power amplifier and used for feedback to stabilize its CEP. The single-shot CEP of the high-energy pulse is indirectly stabilized to 550 mrad RMS, which is the highest CEP stability ever reported for a low-repetition-rate (10-Hz) high-energy laser system. In this novel method, the feedback frequency of the reference pulse from the front-end preamplifier can be almost preserved. Thus, higher CEP stability can be realized than for lower frequencies. Of course, a reference pulse with an even higher repetition rate (e.g., 10 kHz) can be easily employed to sample and feed back CEP jitter over a broader frequency bandwidth.