Ultrafast parametric amplifier pumped by a fiber laser system

Abstract

The generation of high energy femtosecond pulses in Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA) pumped by fiber laser at a repetition rate of 1MHz is reported. Highly nonlinear fibers are used to create an intrinsically synchronized signal for the parametric amplifier. Seeding the OPA by a supercontinuum generated in a photonic crystal fiber, large tunability extending from 700 nm to 1500 nm of femtosecond pulses is demonstrated, with pulse energies as high as 1.2 μJ. Generating the seed using only SPM in a standard fiber, broadband amplification over more than 85 nm and subsequent compression down to 46 fs in a prism sequence are achieved. Pulse peak powers pulses above 10 MW together with 0.5 W of average power is achieved. This system appears to be very interesting due to scalability of pulse energy and average power of both involved concepts: fiber laser and parametric amplifier.