掺镱硼酸钙氧钇飞秒激光器及在拉锥光纤中产生跨倍频程超连续光

跨倍频程超连续光谱的产生是光学频率梳系统中测量载波包络相移频率的关键.本文采用拉锥单模光纤作为非线性光谱展宽介质, 将半导体激光(LD)抽运的掺镱硼酸钙氧钇(Yb:YCOB)振荡器输出的飞秒激光耦合到该拉锥光纤中, 通过飞秒激光在光纤中发生的相位调制、四波混频等非线性效应将光谱展宽至超过倍频程的范围.振荡器输出的飞秒激光脉冲宽度为130 fs, 中心波长为1052 nm, 重复频率为76.8 MHz, 平均功率为620 mW, 耦合进单模拉锥光纤后获得了光谱覆盖范围从550 nm至1350 nm的跨倍频程超连续光谱, 最大输出平均功率为323 mW, 耦合效率达到52%.为进一步实现全固态飞秒激光光学频率梳提供了重要基础.     

Generation of broadband femtosecond visible pulses in dispersion-micromanaged holey fibers

Submillimeter-scale dispersion micromanagement (DMM) is used to generate coherent and stable femtosecond visible pulses in holey fibers as short as 10 mm. The longitudinal variation of the phase-matching conditions for Cerenkov radiation and four-wave mixing explains the results well. We have converted up to 20% of the total input energy to a low-noise solitary wave with a bandwidth up to 50 nm in the range 385-625 nm by using holey fibers with various DMM designs.     

135 W average-power femtosecond pulses at 520 nm from a frequency-doubled fiber laser system

We present a high-average-power femtosecond laser system at 520 nm central wavelength. The laser system delivers sub-500 fs pulses with 135 W average power at a pulse repetition rate of 5.25 MHz. Excellent beam quality is provided by high power fiber amplifiers and maintained during frequency doubling, resulting in a beam quality factor of M2<1.2. To our knowledge, the system presented here is the highest average power green laser source generating femtosecond pulses with diffraction-limited beam quality.     

Demonstration of soliton self-frequency shift below 1300 nm in higher-order mode, solid silica-based fiber

We demonstrate soliton self-frequency shift of more than 12% of the optical frequency in a higher-order mode solid, silica-based fiber below 1300nm. This new class of fiber shows great promise for supporting Raman-shifted solitons below 1300nm in intermediate energy regimes of 1 to 10nJ that cannot be reached by index-guided photonic crystal fibers or air-core photonic bandgap fibers. By changing the input pulse energy of 200fs pulses from 1.36 to 1.63nJ we observe Raman-shifted solitons between 1064 and 1200nm with up to 57% power conversion efficiency and compressed output pulse widths less than 50fs. Furthermore, due to the dispersion characteristics of the HOM fiber, we observe redshifted Cerenkov radiation in the normal dispersion regime for appropriately energetic input pulses.     

Chirped pulse amplification in single mode Tm:fiber using a chirped Bragg grating

We report femtosecond pulse generation and chirped pulse amplification in Tm:fiber. A mode-locked oscillator operating in the soliton regime produced 800 fs pulses with 5 nm spectral bandwidth, at 40 pJ pulse energy. This oscillator seeded a pre-amplifier that utilizes a Raman soliton self-frequency shift to produce wavelength tunable pulses with 3 nJ energy, reduced pulse duration of 150 fs, and increased bandwidth of 30 nm. For further amplification, the pulses were stretched up to 160 ps using a chirped Bragg grating (CBG). Stretched pulses were amplified to 85 nJ after compression in single-mode Tm:fiber and recompressed with the CBG as short as 400 fs. Compressed pulses were coupled into a highly nonlinear tellurite fiber to investigate the potential of this ultrashort pulse 2-μm fiber source as a pump for mid-IR supercontinuum generation.     

Femtosecond oscillator on Yb:KYW crystal pumped by laser diode with fiber output

A femtosecond laser based on an Yb:KYW crystal with direct longitudinal pumping by a high-power semiconductor injection laser with a fiber output is described. Femtosecond pulses were generated in the self-longitudinal-mode-locking operating condition due to the use of a semiconductor saturable absorber. The average power of the oscillator was as high as 3.5 W at a central wavelength of 1035 nm, the pulse length and pulse repetition rate being 200 fs and 85.5 MHz, respectively. The product of the pulse length and the radiation spectrum width was 1.3 times higher than the theoretical limit for the pulse shape described by the function sech². The designed master oscillator can be also used as a stand-alone source of femtosecond radiation pulses for material microprocessing and primary source for femtosecond laser amplification systems.     

Tailored terahertz pulses from a laser-modulated electron beam

We present a new method to generate steady and tunable, coherent, broadband terahertz radiation from a relativistic electron beam modulated by a femtosecond laser. We have demonstrated this in the electron storage ring at the Advanced Light Source. Interaction of an electron beam with a femtosecond laser pulse copropagating through a wiggler modulates the electron energies within a short slice of the electron bunch with about the same duration of the laser pulse. The bunch develops a longitudinal density perturbation due to the dispersion of electron trajectories, and the resulting hole emits short pulses of temporally and spatially coherent terahertz pulses synchronized to the laser. We present measurements of the intensity and spectra of these pulses. This technique allows tremendous flexibility in shaping the terahertz pulse by appropriate modulation of the laser pulse.     

Propagation of femtosecond pulses in large-mode-area, higher-order-mode fiber

We demonstrate propagation of 14 nJ femtosecond pulses through a large-mode-area, higher-order-mode (HOM) fiber with an effective area of 2100 microm2. The pulses propagate stably in the LP07 mode of the fiber through lengths as long as 12 m. The strongly chirped pulses exiting the amplifier fiber are dechirped by the high-order-mode fiber, resulting in pulses with a peak power of 61 kW after propagation in 5 m of the positive-dispersion fiber. A small amount of self-phase modulation is observed in the compressed pulses and is described well by a nonlinear Schr?dinger equation model that takes into account the measured effective area and dispersion of the HOM fiber.     

新型全光纤高能量飞秒光脉冲源的数值模拟

数值模拟了自相似脉冲的产生与压缩,得到一种产生高能量飞秒光脉冲的新方法.结果表明:利用掺铒光纤对光脉冲进行自相似传输,可得到含线性频率啁啾的高能量自相似光脉冲;自相似光脉冲经过空芯光子带隙光纤的一级线性压缩和高非线性光纤的二级非线性压缩,可获得高峰值功率的飞秒光脉冲;压缩过程中存在最佳光纤长度;喇曼自频移和自陡效应对脉冲压缩产生不利影响.     

Fiber based high repetition rate, high energy laser source applying chirped pulse amplification

We demonstrate the potential of a high-gain Yb-fiber amplifier system to provide ultrashort pulses with high energies. 100 μJ pulses generated at a repetition rate of 32 kHz exhibit nearly diffraction limited output (M²≈1.7) at a 1060 nm center wavelength. Using chirped pulse amplification, temporally streched laser pulses from a femtosecond oscillator could be compressed after amplification to subpicosecond pulse duration. The achievable intensities are high enough to create plasmas which can efficiently convert laser light to the extreme ultraviolet radiation. In a multimode Yb-doped fiber amplifier we obtained average powers of up to 22 W and single pulse energies up to 130 μJ.     

Femtosecond parabolic pulse nonlinear compression with gas-filled hollow-core fiber

We study theoretically the spectral intensity evolutions of the femtosecond Gaussian and parabolic pulses with different initial pulse energies and compare the nonlinear compressions of these pulses based on a meter-long hollow-core fiber filled with neon for different initial pulse durations. The pulses are first coupled into gas-filled hollow-core fiber for spectrum broadening, then compressed by the optimal chirp compensation. The parabolic pulse possesses a shorter pulse duration, larger peak power, and cleaner wings than Gaussian pulse. The properties are useful for compressing the pulses and thus generating the high-energy, short-duration pulses.     

Tunable femtosecond laser in the visible range with an intracavity frequency-doubled optical parametric oscillator

We demonstrated experimentally a synchronously pumped intracavity frequency-doubled femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO) using a periodically-poled lithium niobate (PPLN) as the nonlinear material in combination with a lithium triborate (LBO) as the doubling crystal. A Kerr-lens-mode-locked (KLM) Ti:sapphire oscillator at the wavelength of 790 nm was used as the pump source, which was capable of generating pulses with a duration as short as 117 fs. A tunable femtosecond laser covering the 624-672 nm range was realized by conveniently adjusting the OPO cavity length. A maximum average output power of 260 mW in the visible range was obtained at the pump power of 2.2 W, with a typical pulse duration of 205 fs assuming a sech2 pulse profile.     

Systematic variation of parametrically shaped sub-pulse sequences after transmission through a photonic crystal fiber

We present an analytical concept for generating shaped femtosecond laser pulses at the distal end of a microstructured hollow core photonic crystal fiber. The properties of the fiber are analyzed and included in the shaping procedure. A parametric pulse shaping method allows for tailoring a sequence of sub-pulses. In this method, each sub-pulse can be individually controlled by its physically intuitive parameters distance in time, energy, phase and chirps as well as the state of polarization including ellipticity, orientation, and helicity. This is demonstrated with a series of double pulses, in which a single parameter is systematically varied, and additionally with more complex example pulses. Further, we investigate the impact of mechanical distortions of the fiber on the pulse shape. The presented method could be beneficially used in endoscopic applications in life sciences.     

利用非线性脉冲预整形实现脉冲快速自相似放大

报道了一种通过预先对信号光脉冲非线性整形, 进而在光纤放大器中实现自相似演化的方法. 利用透射光栅对和普通单模光纤组成被动脉冲整形装置, 预先优化脉冲的时域宽度和光谱质量, 使脉冲在光纤放大器中快速演化到自相似子. 研究中首先通过数值模拟对比, 说明了非线性整形对脉冲实现快速自相似放大的关键作用, 提高了放大器输出脉冲质量, 减小了去啁啾脉冲宽度. 实验中, 通过优化非线性整形输出, 在2.2 m 长的掺Yb³⁺光纤中, 在一定抽运功率范围内均实现了脉冲自相似放大, 去啁啾后得到脉冲宽度60 fs 的变换极限脉冲输出. 这种非线性脉冲预整形方法有效减小了 自相似演化所需光纤长度, 同时降低了自相似放大对种子源质量的要求, 首次将全正色散光纤锁模激光器成功用于自相似放大, 促进了当前自相似放大系统的全光纤化. 关键词： 非线性整形 光纤放大器 自相似放大 飞秒激光     

Supercontinuum generation with femtosecond optical pulse compression in silicon photonic crystal fibers at 2500 nm

In this paper, femtosecond optical pulses compression and supercontinuum generation in a triangular silicon photonic crystal fiber at 2500 nm are investigated. A region of large minimum anomalous group velocity dispersion, negligible higher order dispersions and unique nonlinearity of silicon are used to demonstrate compression of 100 fs initial input optical pulses to 2.5 fs and ultra-broadband supercontinuum generation with very low input pulse energy over short distances of the fiber.     

Generation of 2-nJ pulses from a femtosecond ytterbium fiber laser

We report a mode-locked ytterbium fiber laser that generates femtosecond pulses with energies as large as 2.2 nJ. This represents a 20-fold improvement in pulse energy compared with that of previously reported femtosecond Yb fiber lasers. The laser produces pulses as short as 52 fs, which are to our knowledge the shortest pulses to date from a Yb fiber laser. The laser is diode pumped by a wavelength-division multiplexing coupler, which leads to excellent stability.     

Time delay reduction in low power ultrashort pulse and pulse stream propagation with overlapping soliton pair

Propagation of temporal 50 femtosecond pulse and pulse stream, which is realized by substituting each input pulse with reduced-order overlapping soliton pair, is investigated through short standard single-mode fiber. For the pulse stream the initial inter-pulse delay is selected to be 227 fs and the pulses are to be perturbed to avoid collision with the neighboring pulses. This method reduces the pulse time delay and properly retains the amplitude despite tradeoff between these two. This is a significant improvement in the low power femtosecond pulse and pulse stream propagation.     

Distortion-free delivery of nanojoule femtosecond pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser through a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate propagation of femtosecond pulses in the 800-nm range through a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber with preserved temporal and spectral profiles for pulse energies up to 4.6 nJ. Without the use of a prechirping unit, 170-fs pulses were transmitted essentially undistorted at 812 nm, near the zero-dispersion wavelength. Because of the air guidance of pulses, intensity-dependent nonlinear effects were minimal, with only 15% pulse broadening occurring at 350-mW average output power. This fiber thus is excellently suited for applications that require single-mode delivery of high-energy ultrashort pulses to the fiber output face such as, for example, miniaturized multiphoton microscopes.     

Simultaneous generation of spectrally distinct third harmonics in a photonic crystal fiber

By coupling femtosecond pulses at lambda - 1.55mum in a short length (Z - 95 cm) of photonic crystal fiber, we observe the simultaneous generation of two visible radiation components. Frequency-resolved optical gating experiments combined with analysis and modal simulations suggest that the mechanism for their generation is third-harmonic conversion of the fundamental pulse and its split Raman self-shifted component.     

Cross-phase-modulation-induced instabilities and frequency shifts in a photonic-crystal fiber

Copropagating fundamental-wavelength and second-harmonic femtosecond pulses of Cr: forsterite laser radiation are used to study cross-phase-modulation-induced instabilities and frequency shifts in a photonic-crystal fiber. Parametric instability of the second-harmonic probe pulse induced through cross-phase modulation by the fundamental-wavelength pump pulse gives rise to distinct sidebands in the spectrum of the probe field transmitted through the fiber. The wavelength of these sidebands was tuned in our experiments within approximately 100 nm by varying the peak power and the delay time of the pump pulse, suggesting a convenient way of controlled parametric spectral transformation of ultrashort laser pulses.This revised version was published online in March 2005. In the previous version, the published online date was missing