Carrier-envelope Phase Stabilization Research Articles

Mid-infrared frequency comb with 6.7 W average power based on difference frequency generation.

We report on the development of a high-power mid-infrared frequency comb with 100 MHz repetition rate and 100 fs pulse duration. Difference frequency generation is realized between two branches derived from an Er:fiber comb, amplified separately in Yb:fiber and Er:fiber amplifiers. Average powers of 6.7 W and 14.9 W are generated in the 2.9 µm idler and 1.6 µm signal, respectively. With high average power, excellent beam quality, and passive carrier-envelope phase stabilization, this light source is a promising platform for generating broadband frequency combs in the far infrared, visible, and deep ultraviolet.

Generation of 88 as Isolated Attosecond Pulses with Double Optical Gating**Supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant No. 2019YFA0307703, the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 91850201, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 11974426.

Isolated attosecond pulses with a duration of 88 as are generated in the spectral range of 29–72 eV using double optical gating technique. The gate width is set to be shorter than half the optical cycle to avoid carrier envelop phase stabilization of the 4.2 fs driving laser pulses centered at 800 nm. The attosecond pulse duration is measured with the technique of frequency resolved optical gating for complete reconstruction of attosecond bursts.

High-power ytterbium-doped fiber laser delivering few-cycle, carrier-envelope phase-stable 100 µJ pulses at 100 kHz

We present a carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stable Yb-doped fiber laser system delivering 100 µJ few-cycle pulses at a repetition rate of 100 kHz. The CEP stability of the system when seeded by a carrier-envelope offset-locked oscillator is 360 mrad, as measured pulse-to-pulse with a stereographic above-threshold ionization (stereo-ATI) phase meter. Slow CEP fluctuations have been suppressed by implementing a feedback loop from the phase meter to the pulse picking acousto-optic modulator. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest CEP stability achieved to date with a fiber-based, high-power few-cycle laser.

Carrier-envelope phase stabilization of an Er:Yb:glass laser via a feed-forward technique.

Few-cycle pulsed laser technology highlights the need for control and stabilization of the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) for applications requiring shot-to-shot timing and phase consistency. This general requirement has been achieved successfully in a number of free-space and fiber lasers via feedback and feed-forward (FF) methods. Expanding on existing results, we demonstrate CEP stabilization through the FF method applied to a SESAM mode-locked Er:Yb:glass laser at 1.55μm with a measured ultralow timing jitter of 2.9 as (1-3MHz) and long-term stabilization over a duration of 8h. Single-digit attosecond stabilization at telecom wavelengths opens a new direction in applications requiring ultra-stable frequency and time precision such as high-resolution spectroscopy and fiber timing networks.

Ultra-low-noise carrier-envelope phase stabilization of a Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb:CYA laser frequency comb with a feed-forward method.

We demonstrate ultra-low-noise carrier-envelope phase stabilization of a Kerr-lens mode-locked Yb:CYA laser frequency comb, which is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that the feed-forward method has been applied to 1μm all-solid-state lasers. We obtain a signal-to-noise ratio of more than 38dB at a 100kHz resolution bandwidth for carrier-envelope phase offset beat signals in two standard in-loop and out-of-loop f-2f interferometers. The residual integrated phase noise amounts to 79.3mrad from 1Hz to 1MHz, corresponding to a timing jitter of 44 as. We also investigate long-term performances of the CEP stabilization in the feed-forward scheme, phase-locked feedback systems and the combining locking techniques in terms of sub-hertz frequency-resolved phase noise and Allan deviation in 1000s. The results indicate that, although the feed-forward CEP stabilization method dominates in the range of 1Hz to 1MHz Fourier frequency, feedback methods with a time integration effect are superior in sub-hertz Fourier frequency phase noise suppression.

Generation of 1.5 cycle pulses at 780 nm at oscillator repetition rates with stable carrier-envelope phase.

We demonstrate a spectral broadening and compression setup for carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stable sub-10-fs Ti:sapphire oscillator pulses resulting in 3.9 fs pulses spectrally centered at 780 nm. Pulses from the oscillator with 2 nJ energy are launched into a 1 mm long all-normal dispersive solid-core photonic crystal fiber and spectrally broadened to more than one octave. Subsequent pulse compression is achieved with a phase-only 4f pulse shaper. Second harmonic frequency resolved optical gating with a ptychographic reconstruction algorithm is used to obtain the spectral phase, which is fed back as a phase mask to the shaper display for pulse compression. The compressed pulses are CEP stable with a long term standard deviation of 0.23 rad for the CEP noise and 0.32 rad for the integrated rms phase jitter. The high total throughput of 15% results in a remaining pulse energy of about 300 pJ at 80 MHz repetition rate. With these parameters and the ability to tailor the spectral phase, the system is well suited for waveform sensitive photoemission experiments with needle tips or nanostructures and can be easily adapted to other sub-10 fs ultra-broadband Ti:sapphire oscillators.

CEP-stable high-energy ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier.

We report on the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization of a Yb-doped fiber amplifier system delivering 30μJ pulses at 100kHz repetition rate. A single-shot, every-shot measurement of the CEP stability based on a simple f-2f interferometer is performed, yielding a CEP standard deviation of 320mrad rms over 1s. Long-term stability is also assessed, with 380mrad measured over 1h. This level of performance is allowed by a hybrid architecture, including a passively CEP-stabilized front-end based on difference frequency generation and an active CEP stabilization loop for the fiber amplifier system, acting on a telecom-grade integrated LiNbO3 phase modulator. Together with recent demonstrations of temporal compression down to the few-cycle regime, the presented results demonstrate the relevance of the Yb-doped high repetition rate laser for attoscience.

Octave-spanning single-cycle middle-infrared generation through optical parametric amplification in LiGaS2.

We report the generation of extremely broadband and inherently phase-locked mid-infrared pulses covering the 5 to 11 µm region. The concept is based on two stages of optical parametric amplification starting from a 270-fs Yb:KGW laser source. A continuum seeded, second harmonic pumped pre-amplifier in β-BaB2O4 (BBO) produces tailored broadband near-infrared pulses that are subsequently mixed with the fundamental pump pulses in LiGaS2 (LGS) for mid-infrared generation and amplification. The pulse bandwidth and chirp is managed entirely by selected optical filters and bulk material. We find an overall quantum efficiency of 1% and a mid-infrared spectrum smoothly covering 5-11 µm with a pulse energy of 220 nJ at 50 kHz repetition rate. Electro-optic sampling with 12-fs long white-light pulses directly from self-compression in a YAG crystal reveals near-single-cycle mid-infrared pulses (32 fs) with passively stable carrier-envelope phase. Such pulses will be ideal for producing attosecond electron pulses or for advancing molecular fingerprint spectroscopy.

Simple method for simultaneous long-term stabilization of relative timing and carrier-envelope phase in waveform synthesis

We present an f-to-2f interferometry method to simultaneously measure and control the relative timing (RT) and carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of an arbitrarily tailored optical-field waveform. Long-term stabilization of the phase-locking system results in a CEP stability of 280 mrad and a RT stability of 110 attosecond over 8 h at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. The synthesized optical field characterized by a transient-grating frequency-resolved optical gating delivers 3.8-fs near single-cycle waveforms. This technique constitutes a versatile tool for coherent pulse synthesis, which can be applied in experiments using a dual-color light field for high-harmonic generation and attosecond timing precision pump-probe spectroscopy.

Fiber-amplifier-pumped, 1-MHz, 1-µJ, 2.1-µm, femtosecond OPA with chirped-pulse DFG front-end.

High-repetition-rate, high-power, few-cycle mid-infrared lasers with carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization are ideal driving sources for studying strong-field nonlinear processes, such as strong-field driven electron emission, solid-state high-harmonic generation, and nonlinear microscopy. Here, we report on a 1-MHz, 1-μJ, femtosecond, 2.1-µm optical parametric amplifier (OPA), pumped by a Yb-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplifier (CPA) and seeded by a chirped-pulse difference-frequency generation (DFG) front-end providing positively chirped 2.1-μm signal pulses. The home-built multi-stage 1030-nm Yb-doped fiber CPA pump laser generates >55-μJ near-transform-limited (245-fs) pulses at 1 MHz repetition rate using a novel 4-pass all-fiber stretcher/front-end for careful dispersion/spectral management. The chirped-pulse DFG scheme is achieved by wave-mixing the 1030 nm pump pulse with a dispersive wave at 645-735 nm generated in a photonic crystal fiber, allowing passive CEP stability of the 2.1-µm pulses. The 2.1-μm pulse is amplified to 1 μJ in a two-stage dispersion-managed optical parametric amplifier (OPA) with a pump energy of ~21 μJ resulting in 95-fs pulses with nice beam profile without additional pulse compression. Multi-μJ, sub-30 fs pulses can be obtained at full pump energy and additional dispersion compensation. The fiber-amplifier-based mid-infrared OPA can be directly applied to high-harmonic generation in solids and optical-field-driven nanophotonic devices and is a compact front-end for a future high-power, high-repetition-rate, long wavelengths CEP-stabilized source for gas-phase high-order harmonic generation.

Active f-to-2f interferometer for record-low jitter carrier-envelope phase locking.

The f-to-2f interferometer plays a key role for carrier-envelope phase (CEP) measurement and subsequent stabilization. The CEP measurement typically relies on the application of two optical nonlinearities, namely supercontinuum generation and second-harmonic generation. Then the cascadation of these nonlinearities often leads to signal levels on the order of a few photons per pulse. We experimentally demonstrate that the introduction of optical gain into the infrared arm of an f-to-2f interferometer can mitigate this detection bottleneck and improve signal-to-noise ratios by 20dB compared to purely passive schemes. We further show that this measure allows for residual phase jitters between the carrier and envelope of about 10mrad, corresponding to record-breaking timing jitters in the single attosecond regime. Moreover, the method appears generally applicable to a wide range of oscillators in the near-infrared and may enable stable CEP locking of mode-locked oscillators that so far have resisted stabilization. Finally, we propose a parametric variant of the active f-to-2f interferometer that can be used for laser amplifiers with kilohertz repetition rates and below.

Few-cycle, carrier–envelope-phase-stable laser pulses from a compact supercontinuum source

We report on a few-cycle, carrier–envelope-phase-stable laser source based on supercontinuum generation driven by an amplified Er:fiber-based system. Laser pulses from an Er:fiber oscillator are amplified, and these amplified pulses generate a stable supercontinuum in a highly nonlinear optical fiber. The short- and long-wavelength tails of this continuum are used in an f-to-2f interferometer to stabilize the carrier–envelope phase (CEP) of the Er:fiber oscillator via an acousto-optic modulator. Compressing the central part of the continuum, we generate a train of CEP-stabilized laser pulses with a central wavelength of 1170 nm, duration of 9.1 fs (∼2.3 optical cycles), and repetition rate of 78.4 MHz. Characterizing the CEP stability of our output pulse train with an out-of-loop f-to-2f interferometer, we find a phase jitter of only 157.4 mrad when integrating the radiofrequency spectrum from 5 mHz to 5 MHz.

Toward terawatt few-cycle pulses via optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification with oxide crystals

High-power femtosecond lasers beyond $5~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ are attractive for strong-field physics with mid-infrared (IR) fields but are difficult to scale up. In optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) at mid-IR wavelengths, a nonlinear crystal is vital, and its transmittance, dispersion, nonlinear coefficient and size determine the achievable power and wavelength. OPCPA beyond $5~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ routinely relies on semiconductor crystals because common oxide crystals are not transparent in this spectral range. However, the small size and low damage threshold of semiconductor crystals fundamentally limit the peak power to gigawatts. In this paper, we design a terawatt-class OPCPA system at $5.2~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ based on a new kind of oxide crystal of $\text{La}_{3}\text{Ga}_{5.5}\text{Nb}_{0.5}\text{O}_{14}$ (LGN). The extended transparent range, high damage threshold, superior phase-matching characteristics and large size of LGN enable the generation of 0.13 TW seven-cycle pulses at $5.2~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ . This design fully relies on the state-of-the-art OPCPA technology of an octave-spanning ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser and a thin-disk Yb:YAG laser, offering the performance characteristics of high power, a high repetition rate and a stable carrier–envelope phase.

Phase control and stabilization in attosecond beamline with fast Fourier transform

With the unveiling of molecular and atomic dynamics, scientists crave finer and faster tools to communicate with the microworld. Attosecond pump-probe enjoys its reputation as the fastest camera, hinting ultrafast movements in the delay graph. To employ this camera, the stability and delay control should have very great accuracy comparable to the camera resolution. It is also of significant importance for stabilizing the carrier envelope phase (CEP) in few-cycle laser field. When dealing with a huge quantity of data, conventional Fourier transform algorism is challenging in high-speed control. Here we put forward the efficient calculation method, fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorism in Mach-Zehnder interferometer for arm length locking and <i>f</i>-2<i>f</i> for CEP locking. In the interferometer locking, 532 nm continuous wave laser is used in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and the phase of the FFT term corresponding to the delay between the two arms of the interferometer serves as a feedback signal on piezo transducer (PZT) in the delay line to reduce the change of the arm length. In the CEP control experiment, data to be analyzed are the <i>f</i>-2<i>f</i> spectrum interference fringes recorded by the spectrometer. The CEP values are obtained from the first order of FFT module output of the integrated spectrum interference fringes, and a labview program examines the relative phase drift and sends a feedback voltage signal to the PZT through the proportion integration differentiation module to compensate slow CEP drift after the chirped pulse amplification system by changing the insert length of a prism pair. The results show that the root mean square (RMS) of the arm length difference is 1.24 nm (4.1 attosecond for light to travel) per meter in the interferometer locking over 12 h, and the RMS of CEP is 227 mrad under 3 ms integration time in the CEP locking over 20 min. These results are able to meet the requirement of the accuracy for attosecond pulse generation and attosecond pump-probe experiments. We also use FFT to stabilize the CEP and relative time simultaneously in the waveform synthesis for 8 h (Huang P, Fang S, Gao Y, Zhao K, Hou X, Wei Z 2019 <i>Appl. Phys. Lett.</i> <b>115</b> 031102), the phase-locking system results in a CEP stability of 280 mrad and a relative time stability of 110 as at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. These results imply that the FFT is versatile and reliable in ultrafast control.

Fast stabilization of a high-energy ultrafast OPA with adaptive lenses

The use of fast closed-loop adaptive optics has improved the performance of optical systems since its first application. Here we demonstrate the amplitude and carrier-envelope phase stabilization of a high energy IR optical parametric amplifier devoted to Attosecond Science exploiting two high speed adaptive optical systems for the correction of static and dynamic instabilities. The exploitation of multi actuator adaptive lenses allowed for a minimal impact on the optical setup.

Continuous every-single-shot carrier-envelope phase measurement and control at 100 kHz.

With the emergence of high-repetition-rate few-cycle laser pulse amplifiers aimed at investigating ultrafast dynamics in atomic, molecular, and solid-state science, the need for ever faster carrier-envelope phase (CEP) detection and control has arisen. Here we demonstrate a high-speed, continuous, every-single-shot measurement and fast feedback scheme based on a stereo above-threshold ionization time-of-flight spectrometer capable of detecting the CEP and pulse duration at a repetition rate of up to 400kHz. This scheme is applied to a 100kHz optical parametric chirped pulse amplification few-cycle laser system, demonstrating improved CEP stabilization and allowing for CEP tagging.

10 W CEP-stable few-cycle source at 2 µm with 100 kHz repetition rate.

We developed a high repetition rate optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) laser system based on fiber-laser-seeded Innoslab to generate few-cycle pulses around 2 µm with passively stable carrier-envelope phase (CEP) by difference frequency generation (DFG). Incorporating a piezo mirror before the DFG stage permits rapid CEP control. The OPCPA system is seeded by a stable supercontinuum generated in bulk material with the picosecond Innoslab pulses. Few-cycle pulses with durations of 17 fs and energies of over 100 μJ were produced in a single OPCPA stage. Three different nonlinear crystals: BBO, BiBO, and LNB were tested in the final parametric amplifier, and their average power related limitations are addressed.

Generation of sub-two-cycle CEP-stable optical pulses at 3.5 µm from a KTA-based optical parametric amplifier with multiple-plate compression.

We demonstrate the generation of 21fs (1.8 optical cycle), 45-µJ, carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stable optical pulses with an octave-spanning spectrum from 2.2 to 4.9µm. Multi-cycle output pulses (120fs, 149µJ, 3.5µm, and 300Hz) from a KTA-based optical parametric amplifier are compressed down to the sub-two-cycle regime using YAG and Si plates. The single-shot CEP stability of the compressed pulses is measured to be 283mrad for 500s. This robust and compact scheme realizes a field strength of 282MV/cm with f/11 focusing, opening a new regime of attosecond strong-field physics in solids.

Carrier-envelope phase stability of a polarization-encoded chirped pulse Ti:Sapphire amplifier

The scheme of polarization-encoded chirped pulse amplification (PE-CPA) reduces the gain narrowing effect in Ti:Sapphire (Ti:Sa) amplifiers by utilizing both crystal axes of Ti:Sa. Hence, the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of a PE-CPA pulse originates from two othogonal polarization directions. The CEP stability of PE-CPA pulses was investigated for various amplification conditions by varying the pump pulse energy. The CEP stability is directly compared to the conventional CPA scheme under the same laser parameters. A quasi-common-path interferometer was realized inside a four-pass amplifier stage, ensuring exceptional geometrical path length stability and high spectral phase sensitivity. The spectral phase noise of PE-CPA pulses showed a minor increase of 4 mrad compared to the conventional scheme, while at unsaturated amplification of a net gain of 13, it revealed a CEP stability better than 63 mrad.

Analytical model of waveform-controlled single-cycle light pulses from an undulator.

This Letter builds upon a recent concept [Phys. Rev. Lett.113, 104801 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.113.104801] for producing ultrashort optical pulses through the coherent radiation of electrons in an undulator. Each pulse contains only a single oscillation cycle, and has a controlled waveform (and hence a stable carrier-envelope phase). While the concept had been demonstrated numerically, this Letter provides an analytical model for the radiation mechanism, thereby revealing three key observations: (i)the correlation between the waveforms of the optical and undulator fields; (ii)the free-space dispersion of transversely confined light; and (iii)the dependence of the optical pulse shape on the undulator field strength.