Generation of high average power, 7.5-fs blue pulses at 5 kHz by adaptive phase control

The spectral width of a 5-kHz Ti:sapphire laser system was broadened by spectral control in a regenerative amplifier consisting of broadband chirped mirrors. The dispersion over the wide spectral range was compensated by a deformable mirror along with a genetic algorithm, resulting in a pulse width of 15 fs. The pulse width is the shortest, to our knowledge, in chirped pulse amplification systems with a regenerative amplifier. The phase distortion of broadband frequency doubling in addition to the Ti:sapphire laser was compensated by using the self-diffraction intensity in sapphire as the feedback signal into the genetic algorithm, resulting in a pulse width of 7.5 fs. The average power of the second harmonic was 1 W with a fundamental input of 7 W.     

不同偏振飞秒激光经块状材料传输后的脉宽压缩

实验研究了线偏振和圆偏振状态下的飞秒强激光脉冲在块状材料中的传输过程。不同偏振的激光脉冲在传输过程中得到了不同程度的光谱展宽,经色散补偿后,脉冲时域宽度均得到了压缩。详细分析了压缩脉冲的脉宽以及啁啾情况与入射激光脉冲能量之间的关系,比较了飞秒激光在线偏振及圆偏振情况下的不同压缩效果。在线偏振入射光情况下得到了最短21fs的压缩脉冲宽度,在圆偏振情况下得到的最短脉冲宽度为22fs。实验结果表明,这种光谱展宽与色散补偿方式对圆偏振光同样适用,而且圆偏振的入射激光将更有利于对更高能量的脉冲进行压缩。在色散补偿量相同的情况下,压缩效果随入射脉冲能量变化的规律符合理论估计。     

Diode-pumped Cr:LiCAF fs regenerative amplifier system seeded by an Er-doped mode-locked fiber laser

A fs regenerative amplifier based on Cr:LiCAF is demonstrated for the first time. With direct diode pumping, 8 μJ of pulse energy are obtained directly from the amplifier. When seeded by an Er-doped fiber laser, the amplified seed pulses are compressed down to 252 fs, limited by residual net third-order dispersion of the compression gratings and intracavity elements. Pulse broadening due to second- and third-order dispersion is theoretically investigated and compared to experimental results. Dispersion generated by the geometrical cavity arrangement is measured experimentally. Received: 19 November 2001 / Revised version: 28 January 2002 / Published online: 14 March 2002     

Femtosecond hybrid mode-locked semiconductor laser and amplifier dynamics

We describe the generation of femtosecond high power optical pulses using hybrid passive-active mode-locking techniques. Angle stripe geometry GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor laser amplifiers are employed in an external cavity including prisms and a stagger-tuned quantum-well saturable absorber. An identical amplifier also serves as an optical power amplifier in a stretched pulse amplification and recompression sequence. After amplification and pulse compression this laser system produces 200 fs, 160 W peak power pulses. We discuss and extend our theory, and supporting phenomenological models, of picosecond and subpicosecond optical pulse amplification in semiconductor laser amplifiers which has been successful in calculating measured spectra and time-resolved dynamics in our amplifiers. We have refined the theory to include a phenomenological model of spectral hole-burning for finite intraband thermalization time. Our calculations are consistent with an intra-band time of approximately 60 fs. This theory of large signal subpicosecond pulse amplification will be an essential tool for understanding the mode-locking dynamics of semiconductor lasers and for analysis of high speed multiple wave-length optical signal processing and transmission devices and systems based on semiconductor laser amplifiers.     

Low Timing Jitter and Tunable Dual-Wavelength Picosecond Pulse Generation from a Fabry--Pérot Laser Diode with External Injection

A novel scheme to generate tunable dual-wavelength optical pulses with low timing jitter at arbitrary repetition rates is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The pulses are generated from a gain-switched Fabry-Pérot laser diode with two external cw beams for injection seeding simultaneously. The cw light is generated by two independent distributed feedback laser diodes, and their wavelengths can be tuned independently by two temperature controllers. The dual-wavelength pulses with the pulse width of 57 ps, the timing jitter of 340 fs, are obtained. The sidemode-suppression ratio of the output pulses is better than 23dB over a 10-nm wavelength tuning range.     

采用光谱展宽技术的钛宝石飞秒激光放大器

报道了飞秒激光啁啾脉冲放大器中的激光脉冲光谱展宽技术，实验中使用了几种光谱展宽元件，结果表明使用激光光谱展宽元件能有效地将飞秒激光脉冲 光谱展宽，抑制了飞秒激光放大器中常见的激光脉冲光谱增益窄化现象，从飞秒放大系统的振荡级输出28fs种子脉冲，放大后得到了重复频率为10Hz、峰值功率为1．6TW、脉冲宽度37．5fs的超短强飞秒激光脉冲 。     

Amplification of kW peak power femtosecond pulses in single quantum well InGaAs tapered amplifiers

The amplification of ps and fs pulses with peak powers of up to 4.5 kW has been investigated in a single quantum well InGaAs tapered amplifier. The pulses with durations of 100 fs or 2 ps were generated by a modelocked titanium-sapphire laser. The amplified pulses indicate strong gain saturation and carrier generation due to photon absorption in the laser active region which causes a temporal broadening of the amplified pulses as well as modifications of the optical spectrum. The gain recovery time was measured by a pump-probe experiment. The experimental results are analyzed with respect to the sub-ps gain dynamics which is described by a relaxation time approximation.     

Seven-terawatt Ti:sapphire laser system operating at 50 Hz with high beam quality for laser Compton femtosecond X-ray generation

We present a 7-TW Ti:sapphire laser system operating at 50 Hz for laser Compton femtosecond X-ray generation. This laser system delivers 8.4 W of average output power at a repetition rate of 50 Hz with a pulse width of 24 fs. It demonstrates successful management using a dynamically stable resonator in the regenerative amplifier and compensation for thermal lensing by a convex mirror in a ring-type four-pass power amplifier. We also present the results of closed-loop corrections for distorted wavefronts of amplified and compressed laser pulses, using an adaptive optical system consisting of a Shack–Hartmann-type wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror. This closed-loop correction results in dramatic improvements, reducing wavefront distortions below 0.05 λ rms. Received: 31 October 2002 / Revised version: 3 March 2003 / Published online: 5 May 2003 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +81-298/61-3349, E-mail: ito@festa.or.jp     

Generation of femtosecond pulses by two-photon pumping supercontinuum-seeded collinear traveling wave amplification in a dye solution

Visible femtosecond (fs) laser pulses have been obtained in a dye solution with a very simple traveling wave collinear configuration. A femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser (790 nm) pumps the dye solution by two-photon absorption and simultaneously generates supercontinuum, which seeds a light-amplification mechanism. Cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating measurements reveal a chirped structure in the dye pulse. The shortest pulse duration achieved is 170 fs and the overall energy efficiency of the process is typically 25%. Received: 22 March 2001 / Revised version: 4 July 2001 / Published online: 19 September 2001     

Enhancement and broadening of extreme-ultraviolet supercontinuum in a relative phase controlled two-color laser field

We experimentally demonstrate the generation of an extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) supercontinuum in argon with a two-color laser field consisting of an intense 7 fs pulse at 800 nm and a relatively weak 37 fs pulse at 400 nm. By controlling the relative time delay between the two laser pulses, we observe enhanced high-order harmonic generation as well as spectral broadening of the supercontinuum. A method to produce isolated attosecond pulses with variable width and intensity is proposed.     

Single picosecond UV pulse generation by mode-locking of an excimer laser-pumped dye laser

A single picosecond ultraviolet pulse has been generated based on mode-locking of a dye laser pumped by a long pulse XeCl laser to serve as the input source for a high-power ps KrF laser system. A short-pulse uv dye laser (BBQ) pumped by an additional XeCl laser was used to selectively amplify a single pulse from a mode-locked pulse train with the pulse separation of 3.2 ns. The amplified single pulse was frequency-doubled to 248 nm with the pulse duration of 20 ps.     

钕玻璃啁啾脉冲放大器产生百焦耳亚皮秒脉冲

以钕玻璃为增益介质研制了高能啁啾脉冲激光放大器系统,实验演示输出啁啾脉冲能量在百焦耳量级时,光谱宽度保持在4—6 nm.最大能量168 J,相应谱宽5.5 nm,中心波长1054 nm.压缩脉冲宽度最短710 fs. 关键词： 啁啾脉冲放大 钕玻璃 高能拍瓦     

300 Femtosecond pulses at 497 nanometer generated by an excimer laser pumped cascade of distributed feedback dye lasers

The setup is a cascade of 3 lasers: A competing cavity dye laser pumped by a XeCl excimer laser, followed by two distributed feedback dye lasers. The typical durations of the pulses from the lasers are 100 ps, 5 ps, and 300 fs, respectively. The output pulses at 497 nm are amplified up to 500 MW. The shortest pulse duration obtained was 198 fs.     

Transmission Properties of the Femtosecond Pulse Through a Near-field Optical Fiber probe

The experimental results are given on the broadening characteristics of the time and frequency profile of the femtosecond pulse passed through a SNOM fiber probe. The power threshold for the spectral and temporal broadening was 158 μw for pulses with 250 fs width and the repetition rate of 250 kHz at 830 nm wavelength. The time broadening reached lps for 250 fs incident pulse of 500 μw. A finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation was carried out to illuminate the transmission properties of ultrafast pulse through the SNOM probe. The broadening influence on temporal resolution spectrum and near-field fluorescence excited by two-photon technique are discussed.     

Efficient pulse operation of Nd:GdVO4 laser with AO Q-switch

We realized an efficient laser diode-pumped Nd:GdVO₄ laser with crystals grown by the floating zone method. In the lasing experiment, a slope efficiency of 78% was achieved with a 1 at.% Nd-doped crystal by pumping at 879 nm. Furthermore, excellent pulsed laser operation was demonstrated with the Nd:GdVO₄ crystal by using an acousto-optical (AO) Q-switch. A pulse width of 7 ns was observed when the pulse-repetition frequency was 40 kHz. It is the shortest pulse width recorded in the case of the AO Q-switched Nd:GdVO₄ laser.     

Multiple-Pulse Operation in Passively Mode-Locked Fibre Laser with Positive Dispersion Cavity

We report the observation of rectangular shape spectrum in passively mode-locked fibre laser with positive dispersion cavity. The spectrum is broad and flat, and 3dB bandwidth can be up to 17.61 nm. Multiple-pulse operation is observed in our laser system. The spectrum width, pulse energy, pulse width and peak power of the mode-locked laser output change with the appearance of multiple-pulse operation.     

Pulse width measurement of high-order harmonics by autocorrelation

Pulse widths of the 7th and 9th harmonics of a Ti:sapphire (TiS) laser have been measured by an autocorrelation technique using two-photon and three-photon ionization of He and Ar as nonlinear phenomena. The pulse widths of the 7th and 9th harmonics were 47 fs and 27 fs, respectively, where the pulse width of the fundamental pulse was 34 fs. The pulse width of the 9th harmonic depends strongly on the peak intensity of the fundamental pulse. These results can be explained by quantum theory by taking into account the temporal and spatial distribution of the fundamental beam. Received: 15 June 1999 / Revised version: 8 October 1999 / Published online: 2 February 2000     

Femtosecond thin-disk Yb:KYW regenerative amplifier

We report a compact thin-disk Yb:KYW regenerative amplifier system. Two different concepts are investigated to obtain either subpicosecond pulses with up to 160 μJ or a pulse energy of 20 μJ with a pulse width of about 300 fs. The first concept uses intra-cavity group-velocity dispersion compensation with Gires–Tournois interferometer mirrors to avoid pulse stretching during amplification. The onset of nonlinear effects in this concept inhibits the generation of shorter pulse durations at this energy level. Shorter pulses can be achieved with the second concept, which is based on dispersive pulse stretching during amplification and uses pulse compression after amplification with a grating compressor. Repetition rates up to 45 kHz are demonstrated.This revised version was published online in May 2005. The Article Category was removed.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Transmission Properties of the Femtosecond Pulse Through a Near-field Optical Fiber probe

1　Ｉｎｔｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎ　　Ｔｈｅｕｌｔｒａｆａｓｔｐｕｌｓｅｓｃａｎｎｉｎｇｎｅａｒ ｆｉｅｌｄｏｐｔｉｃａｌｍｉｃｒｏｓｃｏｐｙａｎｄｔｅｍｐｏｒａｌｒｅｓｏｌｕｔｉｏｎｎｅａｒ ｆｉｅｌｄｓｐｅｃｔｒａｌｔｅｃｈｎｉｑｕｅ,ｗｈｉｃｈｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｅｄｆｒｏｍｔｈｅｃｏｍｂｉｎａｔｉｏｎｏｆｓｃａｎｎｉｎｇｎｅａｒ ｆｉｅｌｄｏｐｔｉｃａｌｍｉｃｒｏｓｃｏｐｙ (ＳＮＯＭ )ａｎｄｔｈｅｕｌｔｒａｆａｓｔｐｕｌｓｅ,ｈａｖｅａｔｔｒａｃｔｅｄｇｒｅａｔｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔ[1～ 3] .Ｔｈｅｓｅｔｅｃｈ…     

Pulse evolution in injection mode locked TECO2 lasers

The pulse train evolution in an injection mode locked TECO₂ laser has been investigated for a wide range of input pulse widths e.g., ranging from the cavity round-trip time to near the bandwidth-limited value for the system. Regimes in which pulse narrowing and pulse broadening occur have been identified and are discussed. The combined use of injection and saturable-absorber mode-locking techniques has produced reliable subnanosecond pulse trains from a large aperture TEACO₂ laser.