Self-compression and controllable guidance of multi-millijoule femtosecond laser pulses

Self-compression of multi-millijoule femtosecond laser pulses and dramatic increase of the peak intensity are found in pressurized helium and neon within a range of intensity in which the ionization modification of the material parameters by the pulse is negligible. The pulse propagation is studied by the (3 + 1)-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation including basic lowest order optical processes - diffraction, second order of dispersion, and third order of nonlinearity. Smooth and well controllable pulse propagation dynamics is found. Construction of compressed pulses of controllable parameters at given space target point by a proper chose of the pulse energy and/or gas pressure is predicted.     

Cascaded compression of the first and second Stokes pulses during forward transient stimulated Raman amplification

The results of numerical modelling of cascaded compression of the first and second Stokes pulses during regenerative regime of the forward transient stimulated Raman amplification are presented for the case when the walk-off length of the first Stokes pulse due to group velocity mismatch is shorter than the length of the nonlinear medium. The influence of the initial amplitudes of the seed first Stokes pulses, its durations and its time delay with respect to the pump pulse, the Kerr nonlinearity of the medium on the conversion efficiency, duration and propagation factor M² of the first and second Stokes pulse are studied. It is demonstrated that for the pump pulse duration of 1 ps the duration of the compressed second Stokes pulses in a KGW crystal near the beam axis may be approximately 14 times shorter than the pump pulse duration. It is shown that the propagation factor of the compressed pulses increases significantly because of complex spatial-temporal dynamics of compression and the influence of Kerr nonlinearity of Raman medium.     

Tunable wavelength conversion between picosecond pulses using cascaded second-order nonlinearity in LiNbO3 waveguides

Tunable wavelength conversion between picosecond pulses is demonstrated by exploiting cascaded secondorder nonlinearity in periodically poled LiNbO₃ waveguides when the pump pulse with 40-GHz repetition rate and 7.5-ps pulse width is adopted. No external continuous-wave input is required in the proposed wavelength converter. The converted signal wavelength can be tuned from 1519 to 1562.6 nm as the lasing wavelength is changed from 1534.5 to 1572.1 nm.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

飞秒激光脉冲在正色散固体材料中的自压缩

实验研究了正色散固体介质中的激光脉冲自压缩现象,证明了无需任何外加色散补偿情况下，固体透明介质中的自聚焦传输过程可使高功率飞秒激光脉冲实现时域脉冲压缩，并详细研究了输出脉冲的时域和频域特性随入射脉冲强度的演化规律.实验结果表明脉冲自压缩量随入射脉冲强度的增加呈递增趋势，然而当入射光强增大到足以引起超连续谱及锥形辐射产生时，脉冲时域形状会发生分裂.此外还发现发散光束入射情况下同样可以观察到脉冲自压缩现象. 关键词： 超短激光脉冲 脉冲压缩 非线性传输     

Multi-stage pulse compression by use of cascaded quadratic nonlinearity

In this paper, the multi-stage compression of picosecond pulses by cascaded quadratic nonlinearity is studied theoretically, and the dependence of pulse compression on phase-mismatch, laser intensity, and crystal characteristics has been discussed in detail. We demonstrate that the multi-stage pulse compression is much more efficient than the single-stage with a same total crystal length. Pulses as short as ∼150 fs can be generated by compressing 30-ps initial pulses in a two-stage configuration under the realistic crystal and laser conditions, and shorter pulses of ∼30 fs may be obtained by three-stage compression. Pulse compression performances with BiBO and BBO crystals are compared and discussed finally.     

Coherent enhancement of broadband frequency up-conversion in BBO crystal by shaping femtosecond laser pulses

An optimal feedback control of broadband frequency up-conversion in BBO crystal is experimentally demonstrated by shaping femtosecond laser pulses based on genetic algorithm, and the frequency up-conversion efficiency can be enhanced by ∼16%. SPIDER results show that the optimal laser pulses have shorter pulse-width with the little negative chirp than the original pulse with the little positive chirp. By modulating the fundamental spectral phase with periodic square distribution on SLM-256, the frequency up-conversion can be effectively controlled by the factor of about 17%. The experimental results indicate that the broadband frequency up-conversion efficiency is related to both of second harmonic generation (SHG) and sum frequency generation (SFG), where the former depends on the fundamental pulse intensity, and the latter depends on not only the fundamental pulse intensity but also the fundamental pulse spectral phase.     

Pulse Temporal Cleaner Based on Nonlinear Ellipse Rotation by Using BK7 Glass Plate

We report a new pulse cleaning technique to enhance the contrast ratio of intense ultra-short laser pulses. A pulse temporal cleaner based on nonlinear ellipse rotation by using BK7 glass plate is developed, and a contrast ratio improvement of two orders of magnitude for the milli-joule level femtoseeond input pulses is demonstrated, the total transmission effieiency of the pulse cleaner is 16. 7%.     

High-efficiency optical compression of Ti:sapphire laser pulses at 800 nm using a silver-coated hollow fiber

A 50 cm silver coated hollow fiber with inner diameter of 250 μm and filled with argon has been used to compress optical pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser at 800 nm. Input pulses with energy of 250 μJ and duration of 110 fs were used and compressed pulses with energy of 220 μJ and duration of 20 fs were generated by using a prism compressor. Numerical and experimental results are compared. There is good agreement between the measured beam diameters of the hollow-fiber output pulse and the calculated values obtained from propagation of the HE₁₁ mode into free space. For comparison, a similar uncoated fused-silica hollow fiber was also used to obtain 20 fs compressed pulses with an energy of 190 μJ. Received: 7 September 2002 / Published online: 26 March 2003 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +1-780/492-1811, E-mail: mohebbi@ee.ualberta.ca     

Efficient multi-frequency generation of ultrashort light pulses using stimulated Raman scattering and optical parametric amplification

Optical parametric amplification of multi-frequency seed pulses generated in a mixture of compressed hydrogen and methane by stimulated Raman scattering of 1 ps, 1 kHz laser pulses at 395.8 nm has been studied. Efficient generation of spectrally narrow ultrashort pulses with a spatial distribution close to the Gaussian profile of the pump beam was obtained in the visible and near infrared ranges.     

Two-color pulse compression in aperiodically-poled lithium niobate

We experimentally demonstrate engineerable compression of two-colored pulses in a linearly-chirped quasi-phase-matching grating. Quadratic solitons generated from fundamental input are reshaped through cascaded parametric processes of second-harmonic generation (SHG) and the back-conversion. We use type-I (e: o + o) SHG geometry in a 50-mm-long aperiodically-poled MgO:LiNbO₃ device to satisfy the group-velocity matching condition. Simultaneously compressed fundamental and SH pulses of about 55-fs duration with small pedestal are generated from the fundamental input pulses of 95-fs duration.     

Long-range spectrally and spatially resolved radiation from filaments in air

The distance-resolved spectral intensity distribution of the backscattered light from long filaments generated in air using ultra-short and intense laser pulses is presented. A clean fluorescence spectrum from N₂ molecules and ions, which is produced by the high peak intensity inside the plasma filament of the fundamental pulse, was clearly resolved from the backscattered supercontinuum. The supercontinuum generated by both the fundamental and the third-harmonic pulses developed progressively and became fully developed only at the end of the filamentation.     

线性啁啾光脉冲在具有纵向增益光纤中的自相似传播研究

非线性薛定谔方程是光脉冲在光纤中传播时所遵循的基本方程.本文利用分步傅里叶方法从数值结算的角度研究了具有线性啁啾的光脉冲在具有横向增益光纤中的自相似传播特性.研究表明:当群速度色散系数和光脉冲的啁啾系数符号相同时,由于在传播过程中自相位调制和群速度色散分别起主要作用,不论何种形式的光脉冲在传输过程中均会受到压缩,但随着传播距离的增加压缩的光脉冲会展宽;埃尔米特高斯输入和正弦输入在传播过程中的光强分布是对称的,拉盖尔高斯输入在传播过程中会发生能量交换而表现出明显的偏转;当群速度色散系数和光脉冲的啁啾系数符号不相同时,在传播过程中群速度色散始终起主要作用,脉冲一直展宽.这些研究结论可能为未来光纤压缩器、光纤放大器以及新型THz调制波源的制备提供新的理论基础和方法.     

Detection of scattered light pulses at femto-Joule level by using a picosecond BBO optical parametric amplifier

We report a technique for detecting weak scattered light pulses based on a 532 nm pumped picosecond β-barium-borate collinear optical parametric amplifier. The measured maximum slope gain factor of the amplifier was found to be around 10⁷, and the energy detection limit was of the order of fJ/pulse for the signal of 730 nm and the idler of 1.5 μm at a pumping intensity of 2.83 GW/cm². The linearity of the gain for this amplifier was found to be excellent for a seeding level of lower than 420 fJ per pulse. The maximum gains and the energy detection limits for the scattered light pulses from various scattering targets were found to be poorer than that from the reflective mirror, owing to the degraded beam quality and the depolarization of the scattered light. A reduction of the maximum gain for the scattered light with the increase of the angle of incidence, which causes pulse broadening and reduces the photon flux of the signal, was investigated. The feasibility of detecting weak scattered light in the infrared by using idler-to-signal frequency up-conversion was also demonstrated, in which the infrared seeder located in the idler branch of the amplifier was injected as the seeding beam and was then parametrically up-converted into the visible signal branch, with an even higher gain.     

Generation of high-quality 10-femtosecond laser pulses with intracavity spatial and spectral control

Spatial and spectral control, using an intracavity capillary and a slit, is applied to improve the output pulse quality of a Ti:sapphire laser. Satellite-free 10-fs optical pulses with a smooth spectral and spatial profile have been generated. Employing a root-mean-square formalism for pulse characterization, spatial, spectral and temporal intensity distributions are analyzed for laser pulses with a duration as short as three to four optical cycles. Received: 11 June 2001 / Published online: 18 July 2001     

Proposal and analysis of a reconfigurable pulse shaping technique based on multi-arm optical differentiators

We propose and numerically investigate an optical pulse re-shaping method based on multi-arm ultrafast optical differentiators. In this approach, the desired (arbitrary) optical pulse shape is synthesized by coherently overlapping different successive time derivatives of an input optical pulse (not necessarily a Gaussian-shape pulse), including the input pulse itself, with suitable relative weights. Time derivatives of (sub-)picosecond pulses can be obtained using first and higher-order ultrafast optical differentiators practically implemented with integrated waveguide or fiber-based linear filtering technologies. Different output pulse shapes can be generated from the same platform by properly programming the relative weights among the different pulse derivatives. The effective bandwidth of the output waveform is not necessarily limited by the input pulse bandwidth but rather it depends on the highest derivative order used for the pulse synthesis. Our results reveal that interesting transform-limited pulse shapes (including flat-top and parabolic waveforms) can be synthesized from Gaussian-like (e.g. Gaussian, sech) pulses using a simple and practical three-arm ultrafast differentiation system with amplitude-only relative weights.     

Temporal analysis of a mode-locked Nd-glass laser by four-wave mixing

The duration, shape, and background intensity level of pulses of a passively modelocked Nd-glass laser are determined by noncollinear phase-matched four-photon frequency mixing of time-separated fundamental and second-harmonic pulses in a KI crystal. The pulse shape is found to be slightly asymmetric with slower trailing than rising parts. The background intensity level before and behind the main pulse is about 5¢10^–6 the peak pulse intensity.     

线性啁啾光脉冲在具有纵向增益光纤中的自相似传播研究

非线性薛定谔方程是光脉冲在光纤中传播时所遵循的基本方程.本文利用分步傅里叶方法从数值结算的角度研究了具有线性啁啾的光脉冲在具有横向增益光纤中的自相似传播特性.研究表明:当群速度色散系数和光脉冲的啁啾系数符号相同时,由于在传播过程中自相位调制和群速度色散分别起主要作用,不论何种形式的光脉冲在传输过程中均会受到压缩,但随着传播距离的增加压缩的光脉冲会展宽;埃尔米特高斯输入和正弦输入在传播过程中的光强分布是对称的,拉盖尔高斯输入在传播过程中会发生能量交换而表现出明显的偏转;当群速度色散系数和光脉冲的啁啾系数符号不相同时,在传播过程中群速度色散始终起主要作用,脉冲一直展宽.这些研究结论可能为未来光纤压缩器、光纤放大器以及新型THz调制波源的制备提供新的理论基础和方法.     

Single X-Ray Attosecond Pulse Generation by Using Combined Pulses Irradiating on a United Two-Atom System

A scheme of a single x-ray attosecond pulse generation from a two-atom system exposed to the combined laser pulses is proposed. Our numerical results show that a single x-ray attosecond pulse rather than a train one can be produced by modulation of ionization. Furthermore, when we change the peak intensity Ih of the high-frequency pulse and keep the intensity of the low-frequency pulse constant, we can find that a range of Ih where the intensity of the attosecond pulse is optimal is available, and a explanation by the stimulated property of the recombination is also presented.     

Passive compression of KrCl excimer laser pulses in naphthalene solutions

The width of KrCl laser pulses has been compressed from 5.2 ns to less than 800 ps using naphthalene as the saturable absorber dye. It was found that the width of the compressed laser pulse decreased with both the input laser intensity and the concentration of naphthalene in the solution. The pulse shortening mechanism is attributed to excited state S₂-S_n transitions in naphthalene.     

The spectral broadening of a blue optical pulse and the modulation of a pulse waveform in a photonic crystal fiber by induced-phase modulation

By copropagating a fundamental pulse and a blue second-harmonic pulse from a Ti:Sapphire oscillator in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF), the spectral broadening of the blue second-harmonic pulse from 380 to 600 nm has been observed by use of induced-phase modulation (IPM) at a 78-MHz repetition rate. From the experimental and the calculated delay time dependence of spectral intensities, it was inferred that the largest spectral broadening was observed when the second-harmonic pulse interacted with the fundamental pulse near the input end of a PCF, where the fundamental pulse was compressed temporally due to self-phase modulation and negative group velocity dispersion. From the simulation, the mechanism of spectral broadening was clarified and the fission process of the fundamental pulse was shown to be influenced strongly by IPM.