Abstract
We present a variant of spatially encoded spectral shearing interferometry for measuring two-dimensional spatio-temporal slices of few-cycle pulses centered around 2 μm. We demonstrate experimentally that the device accurately retrieves the pulse-front tilt caused by angular dispersion of two-cycle pulses. We then use the technique to characterize 500-650 μJ pulses from a hollow fiber pulse compressor, with durations as short as 7.1 fs (1.3 optical cycles).
Highlights
Few-cycle laser pulses with stable electric field profiles and energies of 0.1–1 mJ are a primary tool of attoscience and strong-field physics, enabling the production of isolated attosecond pulses [1] for probing electronic motion on sub-femtosecond timescale [2,3,4]
Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) [12] offers a direct route, but its complexity motivates the compression of multi-cycle pulses available from simpler optical parametric amplification (OPA) systems
Its advantages are that it is a mature technology for 800 nm pulses and can be transferred to new wavelengths straightforwardly, the required anomalous dispersion is and cheaply provided by bulk glass above ∼1500 nm, and the difference frequency generation occurring in the OPA provides passive stability of the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) [16]
Summary
Few-cycle laser pulses with stable electric field profiles and energies of 0.1–1 mJ are a primary tool of attoscience and strong-field physics, enabling the production of isolated attosecond pulses [1] for probing electronic motion on sub-femtosecond timescale [2,3,4]. Using longer drive wavelengths has several advantages stemming from the λ2 dependence of the ponderomotive potential of a continuum electron released in a strong field [9]. These include phase-matched high-order harmonic generation (HHG) above 150 eV [10] and extending the cutoff in HHG spectroscopy of samples with a low ionization potential [11]. Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) [12] offers a direct route, but its complexity motivates the compression of multi-cycle pulses available from simpler optical parametric amplification (OPA) systems. The current state-of-the-art for HCF compression is 8.4 fs pulses of energy 0.7 mJ at 1.75 μm [17]
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