Self-compression in a multipass cell.

Abstract

We demonstrate self-compression of short-wavelength infrared pulses in a multipass cell (MPC) containing a plate of silica. Nonlinear propagation in the cell in the anomalous dispersion regime results in the generation of 14μJ 22fs pulses at 125kHz repetition rate and 1550nm wavelength. Periodic focusing inside the cell allows us to circumvent catastrophic self-focusing, despite an output peak power of 440MW well beyond the critical power in silica of 10MW. This technique allows straightforward energy scaling of self-compression setups and control over the spatial manifestation of Kerr nonlinearity. More generally, MPCs can be used to perform, at higher energy levels, temporal manipulations of pulses that have been previously demonstrated in waveguides.