Higher-order Dispersion Compensation Research Articles

2.6 GW, mJ-class high-energy femtosecond laser system based on Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier

High-peak-intensity ultrafast fiber lasers show excellent prospect for ultrafast science and industrial applications. For simplicity as well as efficiency, chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) is an effective technique for the generation of high-energy sources and single crystal fiber (SCF) also shows great potential due to its convenient configuration. In this work, a high-peak-power hybrid CPA pulsed laser system based on a three-stage single-pass end-pumped Yb:YAG SCF amplifier is experimentally demonstrated. The amplification system emitted pulses with the maximum power of 103.2 W at 100 kHz repetition rate and we obtained the compressed output power of 84.2 W, corresponding to the pulse energy of 0.84 mJ. Considering the third order dispersion that induced by the stretcher and the accurate tuning effect for higher-order dispersion compensation of chirped fiber Bragg grating, we have demonstrated a nearly transform limited output pulse duration of 323 fs with the peak power exceeding 2.6 GW. It can be said that we present the results for the first implementation of the shortest pulse duration and highest peak power in such multi-stage Yb:YAG SCF amplifier. The well-preserved beam quality with the measured M2 value of 1.22 and 1.29 for the horizontal and vertical directions at the maximum achieved average power. With such outstanding combined features, the demonstrated high-energy ultrafast fiber lasers would enable broad applications.

Fast and high-resolution spectroscopy based on asynchronous optical sampling.

Dispersive time stretch has made many ultrafast applications possible owing to its high frame rate, as compared to conventional spectroscopies. By further introducing a converging time lens, this spectroscopy can resolve arbitrary emission spectra within the aperture. However, a spectral resolution of tens of picometers hinders its high-precision application. There are two limitations: the temporal aperture of the acquired signal and the actual acquisition bandwidth. To overcome these restrictions, two approaches were developed. First, a large-aperture time lens, with higher-order dispersion compensation, is used to overcome the fundamental limit of the time-bandwidth product. Second, asynchronous optical sampling, based on two frequency combs, overcomes the technical limit of the acquisition bandwidth. As a result, in this study, time-stretch spectroscopy achieved a 1-pm spectral resolution, 24-nm observation bandwidth, and 1-kHz frame rate. Moreover, it was used to observe some spectral dynamics of the random lasing process and devices with narrow spectral widths. This scheme provides essential improvement for time-stretch spectroscopy to achieve high precision.

Single-channel 10.2 Tbit/s (2.56 Tbaud) optical Nyquist pulse transmission over 300 km.

We describe a single-channel 10.2 Tbit/s online transmission using non-coherent ultrashort optical Nyquist pulses. A 10.2 Tbit/s signal was generated at a symbol rate of as fast as 2.56 Tbaud with a polarization-multiplexed DQPSK format. We developed a new ultrafast optical sampler for Nyquist OTDM demultiplexing with a nonlinear optical loop mirror, an RZ-CW conversion technique to improve the SNR, and an active stabilization technique providing stable long-term demultiplexing operation. With precise higher-order dispersion compensation up to fourth order, a 10.2 Tbit/s signal was transmitted over 300 km for the first time as a real-time demonstration with a spectral efficiency of 2.5 bit/s/Hz. We also report a 10.2 Tbit/s transmission over 225 km with a spectral efficiency of 3.7 bit/s/Hz, which we realized by reducing the roll-off factor to zero.

Two-photon imaging of the mammalian retina with ultrafast pulsing laser

Noninvasive imaging of visual system components in vivo is critical for understanding the causal mechanisms of retinal diseases and for developing therapies for their treatment. However, ultraviolet light needed to excite endogenous fluorophores that participate in metabolic processes of the retina is highly attenuated by the anterior segment of the human eye. In contrast, 2-photon excitation fluorescence imaging with pulsed infrared light overcomes this obstacle. Reducing retinal exposure to laser radiation remains a major barrier in advancing this technology to studies in humans. To increase fluorescence intensity and reduce the requisite laser power, we modulated ultrashort laser pulses with high-order dispersion compensation and applied sensorless adaptive optics and custom image recovery software and observed an over 300% increase in fluorescence of endogenous retinal fluorophores when laser pulses were shortened from 75 fs to 20 fs. No functional or structural changes to the retina were detected after exposure to 2-photon excitation imaging light with 20-fs pulses. Moreover, wide bandwidth associated with short pulses enables excitation of multiple fluorophores with different absorption spectra and thus can provide information about their relative changes and intracellular distribution. These data constitute a substantial advancement for safe 2-photon fluorescence imaging of the human eye.

Tailored Design of Mode-Locking Dynamics for Low-Noise Frequency-Comb Generation

We report on a mode-locked laser design using Yb-doped fiber lasers for low-noise frequency-comb generation. The frequency comb covers the spectral range from $700$ to $1400$ nm. Although this range is more practical for many measurements than that produced by the more commonly used Er-fiber lasers, it has been addressed in only a handful of reports, mainly due to the difficulty of generating a fully coherent supercontinuum at $1\;\mu$m. We overcome this difficulty by a tailored design of the mode-locking dynamics that succeeds in generating energetic 33 fs-long pulses without even using higher-order dispersion compensation, while ensuring that the laser operates with net zero cavity dispersion for low-noise supercontinuum generation. After locking to a Cs atomic clock, this frequency comb is used for absolute-frequency measurements of a Nd:YAG-I$_2$ laser to verify its accuracy by comparison with results from the International Committee for Weights and Measures. After this verification, it is further used to measure the absolute frequency of a 543-nm two-mode stabilized He-Ne laser, which is routinely used for length measurements in our institute, thus verifying its practical utility in metrology applications. The entire setup is built with readily available components for easy duplication by other researchers.

High-order dispersion control of 10-petawatt Ti:sapphire laser facility.

A grism pair is utilized to control the high-order dispersion of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Lasers Facility, which is a large-scale project aimed at delivering 10-PW laser pulses. We briefly present the characteristics of the laser system and calculate the cumulative B-integral, which determines the nonlinear phase shift influence on material dispersion. Three parameters are selected, grism separation, angle of incidence and slant distance of grating compressor, to determine their optimal values through an iterative searching procedure. Both the numerical and experimental results confirm that the spectral phase distortion is controlled, and the recompressed pulse with a duration of 24 fs is obtained in the single-shot mode. The distributions and stabilities of the pulse duration at different positions of the recompressed beam are also investigated. This approach offers a new feasible solution for the high-order dispersion compensation of femtosecond petawatt laser systems.

High-power 100 fs semiconductor disk lasers

Optically pumped passively modelocked semiconductor disk lasers (SDLs) provide superior performance in average output power, a broad range of operation wavelengths, and reduced complexity. Here, we present record performance with high average power and pulse durations as short as 100 fs with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) modelocked vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) at a center wavelength of 1034 nm. A comprehensive pulse characterization confirms fundamental modelocking with a close to transform-limited output pulse of 128 fs and with negatively chirped output pulses as short as 107 fs, which are externally compressed to 96 fs with a single path through a 2-mm-thick ZnSe plate. For the “96 fs result” the pulse repetition rate is 1.6 GHz, the average output power is 100 mW, and the pulse peak power is 560 W. The transform-limited optical spectrum could in principle support pulses as short as 65 fs with higher order dispersion compensation. We measured the most relevant spectral and nonlinear VECSEL and SESAM parameters and used them as input parameters for our pulse formation simulations. These simulations agree well with our experimental results and provide an outlook for further performance scaling of ultrafast SDL technology.

Broadband Linearization of Dispersive Delay Line Using a Chirped Fiber Bragg Grating

A design of chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) for the compensation of higher order dispersion in dispersive delay lines of microwave photonic (MWP) filters driven by broadband sources is presented. It is shown that the modification of the dispersion slope of a nonlinearly CFBG can compensate for third-order dispersion in relatively broad optical bands, resulting in a linear correspondence between group delay and optical frequency. The concept is demonstrated by use of a custom modification of a commercial, low-ripple CFBG for dispersion compensation in 20 nm of the C-band. This broadband linear dispersive delay line is used to provide shape invariance in both the resonance's amplitude and phase responses of single-passband MWP filters based on double-sideband modulation. The dispersion of the delay line is shown to be tunable in the range -170.0 to -143.3 ps/nm by the addition to the CFBG of different lengths of single-mode fiber, without compromising shape invariance.

Photonic Radio-Frequency Arbitrary Waveform Generation With Maximal Time-Bandwidth Product Capability

We present an innovative photonic strategy to generate arbitrary microwave and millimeter-wave signals with maximal time-bandwidth product capability and broadly tunable center frequency. The proposed approach incorporates high-resolution pulse shaping, optical interferometry, and the concept of frequency-to-time mapping in order to enable independent control over the temporal amplitude, temporal phase, and center frequency of the generated waveforms. Numerical simulation and experimental results validate that the time-bandwidth product of these pulses is equal to the upper bound set by the number of independent pulse shaper control elements, extending to more than twice that of conventional frequency-to-time mapping techniques. We thus demonstrate a record photonic arbitrary waveform generation time-bandwidth product of ~589. Also, a length 15 Costas sequence realization is implemented to further portray the potentials of this technique. Detailed analysis of the repeatability and stability of these waveforms as well as higher order dispersion compensation is provided.

Visualization of high-order dispersion for compression of few-cycle pulses

We present a visually intuitive method for higher-order dispersion compensation based on multi-photon interpulse interference pulse scans. The dispersion values obtained from these scans are fed back as a correction to an acousto-optical programmable dispersive filter to compensate residual higher-order dispersions up to fifth order. This method is applied to the dispersion management of a non-collinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier. A grism-pair stretcher is designed based on a global dispersion balance which provides a large stretching factor and supports a spectral bandwidth of up to 320 nm. It is implemented in a two-stage three-pass non-collinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier and stretches 6-fs seed pulses to about 80 ps from 700 to 1,000 nm. The amplified pulses are compressed by material dispersion. Pulses of less than 10-fs duration with a pulse energy of 125 μJ are obtained at 20-kHz repetition rate.

Single parameter optimization for simultaneous automatic compensation of multiple orders of dispersion for a 128 Tbaud signal

We report the demonstration of automatic higher-order dispersion compensation for the transmission of 275 fs pulses associated with a Tbaud Optical Time Division Multiplexed (OTDM) signal. Our approach achieves simultaneous automatic compensation for 2nd, 3rd and 4th order dispersion using an LCOS spectral pulse shaper (SPS) as a tunable dispersion compensator and a dispersion monitor made of a photonic-chip-based all-optical RF-spectrum analyzer. The monitoring approach uses a single parameter measurement extracted from the RF-spectrum to drive a multidimensional optimization algorithm. Because these pulses are highly sensitive to fluctuations in the GVD and higher orders of chromatic dispersion, this work represents a key result towards practical transmission of ultrashort optical pulses. The dispersion can be adapted on-the-fly for a 1.28 Tbaud signal at any place in the transmission line using a black box approach.

Dispersion compensation in an Yb-doped fiber oscillator for generating transform-limited, wing-free pulses

We investigate the effect of dispersion compensation on temporal characteristics in mode-locking by nonlinear polarization rotation in an ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) oscillator with intracavity and external grating pairs. A short fixed length YDF was spliced with a longer single-mode fiber (SMF). Using experimentally measured dispersion characteristics of the YDF, SMF and cavity optics, we control the group velocity dispersion (GVD) and spectral broadening in a cavity by changing the SMF length. As a result, the oscillator generated 29.4-fs transform-limited wing-free pulses, which are to our knowledge the shortest and cleanest pulses achieved without the use of additional optics like a prism pair for high-order dispersion compensation. The results show that a precise balance of higher order terms of the GVD and self-phase modulation is essential for shortening pulse duration.

Single 10-fs deep-ultraviolet pulses generated by broadband four-wave mixing and high-order dispersion compensation

Broadband chirped-pulse four-wave mixing and a pulse compressor consisting of a prism pair and a grating pair are used to generate 10.3-fs deep-ultraviolet pulses. A large proportion of the dispersion up to 1000 fs2 is compensated without inducing third-order dispersion, which together with the smooth spectral and temporal profiles of the pulses makes them suitable for ultrafast spectroscopy. Unexpected spectral narrowing is observed when short input pulses were used for four-wave mixing. This narrowing is explained in terms of other third-order nonlinear phenomena, namely self-phase and cross-phase modulations, which occur simultaneously with four-wave mixing.

Optical pulse compression using the combination of phase modulation and high-order dispersion compensation

Optical pulse compression using high-order dispersion compensation is proposed and theoretically analyzed. Firstly, the required dispersion profile for the high-order dispersion compensation is derived, according to the linear chirp and the nonlinear chirp of a phase-modulated continuous-wave (CW) laser source. With the use of the high-order dispersion compensation, such as the combination compensation of the second order dispersion (SOD) and the fourth order dispersion (FOD), an efficient pulse compression having a less time-bandwidth product and a greater peak power is realized. A sampled fiber Bragg grating (FBG) with both the SOD and the FOD is then designed using the equivalent chirp and the reconstruction algorithm. Finally, in the numerical simulation an optical pulse with a time-bandwidth product of 0.79 is generated via high-order dispersion compensation that is performed by using the sampled FBG.

High order dispersion control for femtosecond CPA lasers

Taking advantage of the temperature dependence of the refractive index, an arrangement is proposed for thermal control of dispersion of a chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser. A glass slab, inserted into the Fourier plane of a stretcher or a compressor, having a spatially varying temperature profile across the beam ensures continuous variation of the spectral phase shift of the pulses. Model calculations are carried out to investigate the feasibility of the arrangement. As a demonstration, simple temperature profiles are created which compensate for the material dispersion of the thermal slab. In a proof of principle experiment it is proved that changes of spectral phase of femtosecond pulses follow the spatially varying temperature profile of a BK7 slab inserted into the compressor of a CPA system. Such a thermal slab is lossless, has a large spectral range, introduces no pixellation and exhibits a high damage threshold. Since it is easy to build into either the stretcher or the compressor of existing CPA lasers, it may become a promising candidate for high order dispersion compensation of high-power femtosecond laser systems.

Mutual compensation of higher-order dispersion in chirped pulse amplification system with regenerative amplifier

In this paper, based on ray tracing, the approach of mutual compensation that introduced properly the negative third-order dispersion to balance the higher-order dispersion in the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system with regenerative amplifier is presented. A shorter pulse with near-transform-limitation can be generated by this method than by the conventional approach that zeros the second- and the third-order dispersion successively in the CPA system.

Theoretical investigation of chirped mirrors in semiconductor lasers

This paper reports a theoretical design of chirped mirrors in 1.3-μm double-section semiconductor lasers to achieve high reflectivity and dispersion compensation over a broad bandwidth. Analytic expressions for reflectivity, group delay and group delay dispersion are derived. We use for the first time chirped air/semiconductor layer pairs as mirrors for higher-order dispersion compensation in semiconductor lasers. Our optimised calculations demonstrate that the broad-band mirrors designed consist of a total of only 12 air/semiconductor layers and achieve a reflectivity higher than 99.8%, a smooth group delay and almost stable dispersion in the laser cavity over a 100-nm bandwidth. Due to a high index contrast of both types of the layers, nl = 1, nh~ 3.5, a high-reflectivity bandwidth of > 700 nm is obtained in 1.3-μm semiconductor lasers. We also compare our results with that of a commercial simulation program and show a good agreement between them. As a conclusion, we assume from the theoretical results that air/semiconductor layer pairs with varying thicknesses used at one end of double-section semiconductor lasers can lead to femtosecond optical pulse generation using mode-locking techniques.

Mutual compensation of higher-order dispersion in chirped pulse amplifier with a Martinez stretcher

The dispersion in a chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) with a Martinez stretcher is analyzed theoretically based on ray_tracing. The method of mutual compensation th at introduced properly the negative third_order dispersion to balance the fifth_ order dispersion is presented. A shorter pulse near the transform_limit can be g enerated by this method rather than by the traditional approach that zeros the s econd and the third order dispersion successively in the CPA system.

Analytic expressions for the fourth- and the fifth-order dispersions of crossed prisms pairs.

In case of tunable ultrashort-pulse lasers, besides the prism material, separation, and insertion, one may choose the central wavelength providing a better high-order dispersion compensation. Because of errors that accumulate in numerical iterations, the analytic approach may be preferable for high-order dispersion examination. Analytic expressions for the fourth- and the fifth-order dispersions of crossed prisms pairs, both at arbitrary and Brewster-angle incidences are presented. Examples are given for e-sapphire slabs and for one or two pairs of fused-silica prisms. Results are shown providing compensation of both the second- and the third-order dispersions, by keeping as low as possible the higher-order ones.

Performance of optical DSB signal based millimeter wave communication system with higher-order dispersion

In this paper, the impact of higher-order dispersion compensation on normalized signal power has been investigated in DSB transmission. We show that if there is dispersion compensation, the normalized power gets increased thereby optimizing the overall system performance. The first- and second-order dispersion compensation has been demonstrated. It is observed that the first- dispersion compensation has the major impact in comparison with second-order dispersion compensation. Further the impact of dispersion compensation on the transmission distance has also been analyzed. It is seen that the transmission distance can be enhanced by 10 3 and 10 6 if dispersion compensation is performed using first- and first- and second-order together, respectively.