Fiber Chirped Pulse Amplification Research Articles

Efficient temporal compression of 10-µJ pulses in periodic layered Kerr media

Pulse compression based on periodic layered Kerr media has been demonstrated as an effective technique for femtosecond pulses with energies around 100 µJ or more. We report such a compressor designed for pulses in the 10-µJ range, which is valuable for many applications. Pulses from a fiber chirped-pulse amplifier are compressed from 300 fs to as short as 60 fs, with good pulse and beam quality. The compressor is a simple and efficient way to extend the performance of common Yb-based sources of pulses with microjoule energies.

Generation and Evaluation of an Efficient Femtosecond Green Laser.

We demonstrate femtosecond ultra-stable green laser generation by an ytterbium-doped polarization-maintaining fiber laser with a 2.4 mm long lithium triborate (LBO) crystal. We generated 5.6 W of femtosecond green light at 520 nm for a fundamental power of 12 W, which corresponds to a conversion efficiency of 46.7%. The fiber chirped-pulse amplifier, which has an environmentally immune front end, delivered 170 fs pulses at a 75 MHz repetition rate centered at 1040 nm. According to the dispersion of the optical material in a double-frequency setup, the introduced dispersion had a negligible effect for the green laser, and the pulse duration of the generated green laser was calculated to be 171 fs, resulting in an excellent power stability, with fluctuation as low as 0.16% of the generated green light. This system could be of great interest in ultrafast optical and photobiology research.

Coherent beam combining of two all-PM thulium-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifiers

In this paper, we report a coherent beam combining (CBC) system that involves two thulium-doped all-polarization maintaining (PM) fiber chirped pulse amplifiers. Through phase-locking the two channels via a fiber stretcher by using the stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm, a maximum average power of 265 W is obtained, with a CBC efficiency of 81% and a residual phase error of λ/17. After de-chirping by a pair of diffraction gratings, the duration of the combined laser pulse is compressed to 690 fs. Taking into account the compression efficiency of 90% and the main peak energy proportion of 91%, the corresponding peak power is calculated to be 4 MW. The laser noise characteristics before and after CBC are examined, and the results indicate that the CBC would degrade the low frequency relative intensity noise (RIN), of which the integration is 1.74% in [100 Hz, 2 MHz] at the maximum combined output power. In addition, the effects of the nonlinear spectrum broadening during chirped pulse amplification on the CBC efficiency are also investigated, showing that a higher extent of pulse stretching is effective in alleviating the spectrum broadening and realizing a higher output power with decent combining efficiency.Graphical

Intra-oscillator high harmonic source reaching 100-eV photon energy

Resonant enhancement inside an optical cavity has been a wide-spread approach to increase efficiency of nonlinear optical conversion processes while reducing the demands on the driving laser power. This concept has been particularly important for high harmonic generation XUV sources, where passive femtosecond enhancement cavities allowed significant increase in repetition rates required for applications in photoelectron spectroscopy, XUV frequency comb spectroscopy, including the recent endeavor of thorium nuclear clock development. In addition to passive cavities, it has been shown that comparable driving conditions can be achieved inside mode-locked thin-disk laser oscillators, offering a simplified single-stage alternative. This approach is less sensitive to losses thanks to the presence of gain inside the cavity and should thus allow higher conversion efficiencies through tolerating higher intensity in the gas target. Here, we show that the intra-oscillator approach can indeed surpass the much more mature technology of passive enhancement cavities in terms of XUV flux, even reaching comparable values to single-pass sources based on chirped-pulse fiber amplifier lasers. Our system operates at 17 MHz repetition rate generating photon energies between 60 eV and 100 eV. Importantly, this covers the highly attractive wavelength for the silicon industry of 13.5 nm at which our source delivers 60 nW of outcoupled average power per harmonic order.

High reflectivity, ultraflat-spectrum chirped fiber Bragg grating written using low energy UV femtosecond pulses

Chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) have been extensively used in applications such as ultrafast lasers, fiber sensors, and fiber communications. This work presents a comprehensive investigation of CFBG written using a 257 nm femtosecond laser and a linear chirped phase mask. The CFBG, written on a hydrogen-loaded polarization-maintaining fiber, exhibited a center wavelength of 1031.7 nm and a bandwidth of 11.97 nm. The CFBG achieved an average reflectivity of 98.2 % within its bandwidth, demonstrating an ultrahigh flatness of the reflection spectrum with a low spectral reflectivity variance of 0.00003 (σ2). The high group velocity dispersion (GVD) of 60.7 ps2 signifies its potential in fiber chirped pulse amplification systems and dispersion compensation system. Meanwhile, the fs-laser + PM writing method shows advantages of high efficiency and low energy consumption (as low as 2 nJ), owing to the high photosensitivity of the fiber to the UV band, which holds significant promise in fiber grating inscription.

High-energy, frequency-doubled thulium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification system at 950 nm

Compact, high-energy ultrafast sources at less exploited fiber gain wavelengths can enable various applications. Here, a high pulse-energy (138 nJ) femtosecond (390 fs) laser source with a center wavelength around 950 nm is demonstrated by frequency-doubling of ultrafast pulses from a thulium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification system. The thulium-doped fiber system generates an average output power of 6.5 W around a wavelength of 1.9 µm whose pulses (703 nJ) can be compressed to a pulse duration of 490 fs. This ultrafast 950 nm source offers an attractive system for applications, including two-photon microscopy, and marks the highest-energy fiber system at this wavelength to date.

1 MHz, 273 W average power Ytterbium-doped rod-type fiber chirped pulse amplification system

Ytterbium-doped ultrafast fiber lasers are widely used in scientific research, industrial processing, medical diagnosis, and other fields due to their excellent beam quality and high power output. The larger mode area allows the fiber to transmit higher peak-pulse power. The commercial rod-type Ytterbium-doped fiber with a core diameter of 85 μm, produced by NKT in Denmark, can produce ultra-short pulses on the order of 100 watts and 100 microjoules. Based on this rod-type fiber, we construct a chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) system in which the high-efficiency transmission gratings and temperature-tunable chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) are used to compensate for dispersion. We investigate the effect of power input on the amplified power and pulse compression quality, and find that higher power input slows down the gain saturation and improves amplification efficiency. At power inputs of 20 W and 30 W, we obtain power outputs of 305 W and 323 W respectively, with an amplification efficiency of about 80%. To reduce the accumulation of nonlinear phase shift, we use circular polarization amplification. At low power outputs (less than 160 W), the effect of nonlinear phase accumulation on the compressed pulse is negligible, and the increase in power input increases the amplification efficiency. When the power output exceeds 200 W, the cumulative increase of nonlinear phase shift reduces the pulse compression quality, which implies that the input power is appropriately reduced to the power range between 5 W and 20 W. With a power input of 20 W and pump power of 429 W, the power output can reach 305 W. After pulse is compressed by using a diffraction-grating pair, this rod-type fiber CPA system can deliver 1 MHz, 264 fs pulses with 273 W in average power. These results provide an important experimental basis for optimizing the performance of high-power and high-energy ultrafast fiber lasers.

Hybrid Fiber-Single Crystal Fiber Chirped-Pulse Amplification System Emitting More Than 1.5 GW Peak Power With Beam Quality Better Than 1.3

Hybrid Fiber-Single Crystal Fiber Chirped-Pulse Amplification System Emitting More Than 1.5 GW Peak Power With Beam Quality Better Than 1.3

Monolithic tapered Yb-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier delivering 126 μJ and 207 MW femtosecond laser with near diffraction-limited beam quality

In this work, a high-energy and high peak power chirped pulse amplification system with near diffraction-limited beam quality based on tapered confined-doped fiber (TCF) is experimentally demonstrated. The TCF has a core numerical aperture of 0.07 with core/cladding diameter of 35/250 µm at the thin end and 56/400 μm at the thick end. With a backward-pumping configuration, a maximum single pulse energy of 177.9 μJ at a repetition rate of 504 kHz is realized, corresponding to an average power of 89.7 W. Through partially compensating for the accumulated nonlinear phase during the amplification process via adjusting the high order dispersion of the stretching chirped fiber Bragg grating, the duration of the amplified pulse is compressed to 401 fs with a pulse energy of 126.3 μJ and a peak power of 207 MW, which to the best of our knowledge represents the highest peak power ever reported from a monolithic ultrafast fiber laser. At the highest energy, the polarization extinction ratio and the M2 factor were respectively measured to be ~ 19 dB and 1.20. In addition, the corresponding intensity noise properties as well as the short- and long-term stability were also examined, verifying a stable operation of the system. It is believed that the demonstrated laser source could find important applications in, for example, advanced manufacturing and photomedicine.Graphical

High power optical frequency comb with 10-19 frequency instability.

Optical frequency combs with more than 10 W have paved the way for extreme ultraviolet combs generation by interaction with inert gases, leading to extreme nonlinear spectroscopy and the ultraviolet nuclear clock. Recently, the demand for an ultra-long-distance time and frequency space transfer via optical dual-comb proposes a new challenge for high power frequency comb in respect of power scaling and optical frequency stability. Here we present a frequency comb based on fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA), which can offer more than 20 W output power. We further characterize the amplifier branch noise contribution by comparing two methods of locking to an optical reference and measure the out-of-loop frequency instability by heterodyning two identical high-power combs. Thanks to the low noise CPA, reasonable locking method, and optical path-controlled amplifiers, the out-of-loop beat note between two combs demonstrates the unprecedented frequency stability of 4.35 × 10-17 at 1s and 6.54 × 10-19 at 1000 s.

High-power two-color plasma-based THz generation driven by a Tm-doped fiber laser.

We report on the efficient generation of broadband THz radiation based on a two-color gas-plasma scheme. Broadband THz pulses covering the whole THz spectral region, from 0.1-35 THz, are generated. This is enabled by a high-power, ultra-fast, thulium-doped, fiber chirped pulse amplification (Tm:FCPA) system and a subsequent nonlinear pulse compression stage that uses a gas-filled capillary. The driving source delivers 40 fs pulses at a central wavelength of 1.9 μm with 1.2 mJ pulse energy and 101 kHz repetition rate. Owing to the long driving wavelength and the use of a gas-jet in the THz generation focus, the highest reported conversion efficiency for high-power THz sources (>20 mW) of 0.32% has been achieved. The high efficiency and average power of 380 mW of the broadband THz radiation make this an ideal source for nonlinear, tabletop THz science.

Broadband spectral combining of three pulse-shaped fiber amplifiers with 42fs compressed pulse duration.

We demonstrate ultra-broadband spectral combining of ultrashort pulses from Yb-doped fiber amplifiers, with coherently spectrally synthesized pulse shaping, to achieve tens-of-fs pulses. This method can fully compensate for gain narrowing and high order dispersion over broad bandwidth. We produce 42fs pulses by spectrally synthesizing three chirped-pulse fiber amplifiers and two programmable pulse shapers across an 80nm overall bandwidth. To the best of our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse duration achieved from a spectrally combined fiber system at one-micron wavelength. This work provides a path toward high-energy, tens-of-fs fiber chirped-pulse amplification systems.

Burst-mode Yb:fiber chirped pulse amplification system seeded by a multi-soliton bunch fiber laser

We demonstrated a burst-mode Yb:fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system with a seed laser operating in the multi-soliton bunch regime. The multi-soliton bunch operation from a figure-9 fiber laser was obtained by adjusting the pump power properly, where the pulse number can be tuned flexibly from 1 to 3. The CPA system delivers bursts at a repetition rate of 16.34 MHz, while each burst comprise 3 pulses with an interval of 3.96 ns. When the pump power of the main amplifier is increased to 24 W, the maximum output power and energy of the pulse burst is 5.38 W and 329.25 nJ, respectively. The pulse duration could be further reduced to 592 fs with a grating-pair compressor. The proposed scheme provides an alternative seed laser source for burst-mode CPA systems, which will be beneficial to the design of flexible high-power femtosecond lasers.

Femtosecond Yb-doped tapered fiber pulse amplifiers with peak power of over hundred megawatts.

Ultrafast fiber lasers combining high peak power and excellent beam quality in the 1-µm wavelength range have been explored to applications in industry, medicine and fundamental science. Here, we report generation of a high-energy sub 300 fs polarization maintaining fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system by using a Yb-doped large mode area tapered polarization maintaining (PM) optical fiber with the core/cladding diameters of 35/250 µm at the thin end and 56/400 µm at the thick end. The taper fiber design features a confined core for selective gain amplification and multi-layer cladding for enhanced suppression of higher order modes. In this regime, we have demonstrated 266 fs pulse amplification with peak power of up to 132 MW at a repetition rate of 2 MHz and high beam quality with measured M2 value of 1.1∼1.3. To the best of our knowledge, it is the highest peak power reported in such tapered Yb-doped fiber (T-YDF) amplifier in the femtosecond regime. This work indicates the great potential of the T-YDF to realize further power scaling, high laser efficiency, and excellent beam quality in high-power femtosecond fiber lasers.

Thulium-doped all-PM fiber chirped pulse amplifier delivering 314 W average power

Abstract A high-power all polarization-maintaining (PM) chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system operating in the 2.0 μm range is experimentally demonstrated. Large mode area (LMA) thulium-doped fiber (TDF) with a core/cladding diameter of 25/400 μm is employed to construct the main amplifier. Through dedicated coiling and cooling of the LMA-TDF to manage the loss of the higher order mode and thermal effect, a maximum average power of 314 W with a slope efficiency of 52% and polarization extinction ratio of 20 dB is realized. The pulse duration is compressed to 283 fs with a grating pair, corresponding to a calculated peak power of 10.8 MW, considering the compression efficiency of 88% and the estimated Strehl ratio of 89%. Moreover, through characterizing the noise properties of the laser, an integrated relative intensity noise of 0.11% at 100 Hz−1 MHz is obtained at the maximum output power, whereas the laser timing jitter is degraded by the final amplifier from 318 to 410 fs at an integration frequency of 5 kHz to 1 MHz, owing to the self-phase modulation effect-induced spectrum broadening. The root-mean-square of long-term power fluctuation is tested to be 0.6%, verifying the good stability of the laser operation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power of an ultrafast laser realized from an all-PM-fiber TDF-CPA system ever reported.

Separation and amplification of Kelly sidebands and main soliton pulse in a 2-μm ultrafast fiber chirped pulse amplifier

We theoretically and experimentally realize the complete separation of Kelly sidebands and main soliton pulse by introducing a spatial filter inside a pair of grating in a 2-μm fiber chirped pulse amplifier (CPA). The separated Kelly sidebands are experimentally demonstrated to be manifested itself as an independent pulse in the time domain. The average power of the Kelly sidebands is further amplified from 8 mW to ∼ 3.7 W in the amplifier. The extracted main soliton pulse is amplified from ∼ 80 mW to > 7 W with the shortest pulse duration of 346 fs after anomalous or normal dispersion stretching. With further shaping the soliton spectrum to suppress the spectral narrowing effect, the pulse duration is further shortened to ∼ 200 fs.

Spectrally tunable high-power Yb:fiber chirped-pulse amplifier

Tailoring the properties of the driving laser to the need of applications often requires compromises among laser stability, high peak and average power levels, pulse duration, and spectral bandwidth. For instance, spectroscopy with optical frequency combs in the extreme/visible ultraviolet spectral region requires a high peak power of the near-IR driving laser, and therefore high average power, pulse duration of a few tens of fs, and maximal available spectral bandwidth. Contrarily, the parametric conversion efficiency is higher for pulses with a duration in the 100-fs range due to temporal walk-off and coating limitations. Here we suggest an approach to adjust the spectral characteristics of high-power chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) to the requirements of different nonlinear frequency converters while preserving the low-phase-noise (PN) properties of the system. To achieve spectral tunability, we installed a mechanical spectral shaper in a free-space section of the stretcher of an in-house-developed ytterbium-fiber-based CPA system. The CPA system delivers 100 W of average power at a repetition rate of 132.4 MHz. While gaining control over the spectral properties, we preserve the relative-intensity-noise and PN properties of the system. The high-power CPA can easily be adjusted to deliver either a spectrum ideal for mid-IR light generation (full width at half maximum of ∼ 11 nm , compressed pulse duration of 230 fs) or a spectrum ideal for highly nonlinear processes such as high-harmonic generation ( - 10 dB level of > 50 nm , transform-limited pulse duration of ∼ 65 fs ).

Large dispersion-managed broadband high-energy fiber femtosecond laser system with sub 300 fs pulses and high beam quality output

We experimentally demonstrate a high-energy sub 300 fs polarization maintaining fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. The preamplifier is a monolithic fiberized system that uses two cascaded temperature-assisted dispersion-tuning broadband chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) with a reflected bandwidth of 20 nm as stretchers. To make full use of the stretcher to lower the system’s nonlinearity accumulation, a homemade mode locked fiber laser with a spectral width of 14.8 nm (full width at half maximum) is selected as the seeder to offer a stretched pulse width of 1.69 ns. The main amplifier is based on a one-stage simple Yb:YAG single crystal fiber amplifier with an amplified output power of 40.6 W at a repetition rate of 200 kHz, and the beam quality is conserved in a single mode beam profile with beam quality of 1.246 and 1.142 in the horizontal direction and vertical direction, respectively. During amplification, the spectral gain narrowing effect is observed. To achieve the high-speed switch of the laser, an acoustical optical modulator (AOM) is inserted before the compressor to achieve high-speed turn-on/off control. The compressor is based on a diffraction grating pair with a groove density of 1600 line/mm to offer a dispersion match with the stretcher of the CFBGs. With the CFBG’s fine-tuned capacity of second-order dispersion and higher-order dispersion, the compressed average power of 29.6 W and pulse duration of 278 fs, corresponding to a pulse energy of 148 µJ and a peak power of 532 MW with ignoring the wings of the pulse, is obtained. The beam quality is well conserved after compression, and the beam quality is 1.250 and 1.196 in the horizontal direction and vertical direction, respectively. A power fluctuation of 0.1% (root mean square) and a beam pointing drift of 8.47 µrad/°C over 8 h are realized. This high peak power and high beam quality femtosecond laser is promising in science and industrial applications.

High power chirped pulse Yb fiber amplifier seeded by mode-locked fiber laser oscillator with multimode interference based saturable absorber

In this research, we demonstrate a novel femtosecond fiber laser system which comprises of ytterbium (Yb) doped mode-locked fiber laser oscillator using nonlinear multimode interference (NL-MMI) based saturable absorber (SA) seeded into a chirped pulse fiber amplifier. The laser pulses from the oscillator centered at a wavelength of 1033.2 nm with a pulse duration of 2.4 ps. Correspondingly, the pulse energy is 120 pJ at the fundamental repetition rate of 21.35 MHz. By integrating the laser oscillator with the amplification system, an output average power of 11 W with compressed pulse duration of 340 fs and pulse energy of 0.51 μJ is achieved. The pulse possesses high stability with signal-to-noise ratio up to 58 dB. These characteristics evince that the fiber amplifier system seeded with NL-MMI based mode-locked laser oscillator results in a highly stable femtosecond laser.

Investigation on the spectrum smoothing effect in an ultrafast Tm-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier

We investigate the spectrum smoothing effect of the amplified soliton pulse in an ultrafast Tm-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier, in which the soliton pulse is amplified to 7.3 W with a pulse duration of ∼350 fs. The experimental investigation reveals that the spectrum smoothing effect arises from the polarization filtering effect of the grating-based pulse compressor, which is further confirmed by a theoretical simulation. This effect not only smooths the amplified laser spectrum, but also improves the pulse contrast ratio.