Terawatt-Class Few-Cycle Short-Wave Infrared Vortex Laser

Abstract

As a driving source for many nonlinear vortex phenomena, such as the generation of isolated attosecond optical vortices, terahertz vortices, etc., terawatt-class few-cycle short-wave infrared vortex lasers are now attracting widespread attention. However, because the vortex characteristics of optical vortices are difficult to maintain in the amplification and compression stages, the generation of high-intensity few-cycle vortex lasers is still in the exploratory stage. In this article, we report 20-Hz, 18.6-mJ, 60-fs, and 1.45-μm infrared vortex lasers with 1, 2, and 3 topological charges successfully generated in an optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system. A clean intensity node at the beam center is observed and highly stable propagation in free space is demonstrated. Moreover, this high-energy vortex pulse is spectrally broadened in multiple thin plates and temporally compressed to 10.59 fs (2.2 optical cycles) with chirped mirrors, corresponding to a peak power of 1.08 TW, while highly preserving the vortex information. We believe that the generated high-energy few-cycle vortex laser has important applications from vortex optics to strong-field physics.