Abstract
Starting from a femtosecond ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier, we demonstrate the generation of near Fourier transform-limited high peak power picosecond pulses through spectral compression in a nonlinear solid-state-based multipass cell. Input 260 fs pulses negatively chirped to 2.4 ps are spectrally compressed from 6 nm down to 1.1 nm, with an output energy of 13.5 µJ and near transform-limited pulses of 2.1 ps. A pulse shaper included in the femtosecond source provides some control over the output spectral shape, in particular its symmetry. The spatial quality and spatio-spectral homogeneity are conserved in this process. These results show that the use of multipass cells allows energy scaling of spectral compression setups while maintaining the spatial properties of the laser beam.
Highlights
Spectral compression of negatively chirped pulses in a nonlinear medium is an elegant way to turn a femtosecond laser source into a close to Fourier transform-limited (FTL) picosecond source [1]
We report the use of a multipass cells (MPC) to perform spectral compression at ∼27 μJ input energy, beyond what is possible in solid core fibers
We report the use of a solid-state material-based MPC to implement spectral compression
Summary
Spectral compression of negatively chirped pulses in a nonlinear medium is an elegant way to turn a femtosecond laser source into a close to Fourier transform-limited (FTL) picosecond source [1]. A solid or gas nonlinear medium is inserted inside the cell, allowing easy tuning of the nonlinearity level through the gas pressure or bulk medium thickness, while dispersion properties may be tailored through appropriate mirrors coatings This concept has been used mostly to implement temporal compression in a wide range of pulse energies and durations [13,14,15,16,17]. The measured output beam quality factor is M2 = 1.2 × 1.0 with high spectral homogeneity This proof of principle constitutes an additional example of the use of MPC to scale the energy of nonlinear subsystems that are usually implemented using optical fibers
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