THz-wave generation by optical rectification of ultrashort laser pulses with tilted amplitude front

The optical rectification of ultrashort laser pulses with a titled amplitude front in LiNbO₃ crystal is studied theoretically. It is shown that the results of calculation are in reasonable agreement with experimental data.     

THz generation via optical rectification with ultrashort laser pulse focused to a line

We report on efficient THz pulse generation via optical rectification with femtosecond laser pulses focused to a line by a cylindrical lens. This configuration provides phase-matched conditions in the superluminal regime. 35 pJ THz pulses have been generated with this technique in a stoichiometric LiNbO₃ crystal pumped by 2 μJ femtosecond laser pulses at room temperature. An unusual superquadratic rise of the THz pulse energy with the laser pulse energy has been observed at high laser energies. This extraordinary energy dependence of the THz generation efficiency is explained by self-focusing of the laser beam in the crystal. Z-scan measurements and comparison of the THz pulse spectra created with laser pulses having different energies confirm this interpretation.     

Tunable second harmonic generation by phase-modulated ultrashort laser pulses

We report on the generation of tunable light around 400?nm by frequency-doubling ultrashort laser pulses whose spectral phase is modulated by a sum of sinusoidal functions. The linewidth of the ultraviolet band produced is narrower than 1?nm, in contrast to the 12?nm linewidth of the non-modulated incident spectrum. The influence of pixellation of the liquid crystal spatial light modulator on the efficiency of the phase-modulated second harmonic generation is discussed.     

Theoretical model of terahertz radiation generation by laser pulses with tilted wave fronts

A theoretical model is proposed for terahertz radiation generation by femtosecond laser pulses with tilted wave fronts. Self-consistent evolution of the optical and terahertz pulses is investigated. The red shift of the pumping pulse spectrum and the formation of short-long-wave quasi-solitons are examined.     

Toward generation of μJ range sub-ps THz pulses by optical rectification

Recently the possibility of scaling up the energy of sub-ps THz pulses generated in lithium-niobate by tilted pulse front excitation was demonstrated. Using 500 μJ energy pump pulses at 780 nm center wavelength, we achieved THz pulses with energy up to 240 nJ. In this article, results of calculations using a simple model predict the possibility of increasing the THz pulse energy above 1 μJ and the quantum efficiency up to 50% by decreasing the temperature. The dependence of the THz pulse energy and the maximum achievable electric field on the crystal length and the pump pulse duration is also presented. According to the calculations, generation of the maximum THz energy needs a specific pump pulse duration, because of increasing dispersion and absorption with increasing frequency. Not only longer, but also shorter pulses lead to a degradation of the THz energy. Results of calculations for GaSe, GaP and ZnTe are also presented. PACS 07.57.Hm; 42.65.Ky; 42.79.Nv     

Design of a contact grating setup for mJ-energy THz pulse generation by optical rectification

According to the recent calculations, more efficient THz pulse generation is possible using relief grating on the front surface of the generating LiNbO₃ (LN) crystal for tilted-pulse-front-excitation rather than imaging the pump spot on a reflection grating into the LN crystal. Very recently, it was shown that—compared to a free-standing LN surface-relief grating—significantly higher diffraction efficiency can be reached if the grating profiles are filled with fused silica. Since realisation of such a setup is technically very challenging, in the present paper, we analyse the case where the input side of the LN grating is immersed into a refractive index matching liquid (RIML) instead of a solid material. Our results showed that the diffraction efficiency remains above 90?% for a refractive index ranging 1.45–1.60 of the applied RIML, and it is as high as 99?% for using the RIML for BK7. For this case, we carried out detailed calculations for various grating parameters. We propose a practical setup applying tilted input and slightly tilted output surfaces resulting in low losses and high diffraction efficiency for the pump. We conclude that a contact grating setup using BK7 RIML is suitable for producing THz pulses even in the mJ-energy range.     

Coherent generation of tunable, narrow-band THz radiation by optical rectification of femtosecond pulse trains

Received: 14 March 1997     

Efficient generation of terahertz radiation by the method of optical rectification of terawatt laser pulses

Factors that lead to a decrease in the width and the mean frequency of the spectrum of terahertz (THz) radiation that were observed in recent experiments on optical rectification of powerful (∼0.5 TW) femtosecond laser pulses with a tilted amplitude front in a lithium niobate crystal are considered. A simple method is proposed that allows one to avoid the above transformation of the spectrum and to ensure a high efficiency of generation of THz radiation when laser pulses with a power of several TW are used.     

Tunable ultrashort laser pulses generated through filamentation in gases

Tunable and stable ultrashort laser pulses in the visible spectrum are generated with high efficiency by four-wave mixing process during the filamentation of near-infrared and infrared laser pulses in gases. It is shown that these tunable ultrashort pulses have a very low energy fluctuation and an excellent mode quality due to the processes of intensity clamping and self-filtering in the filament.     

Coherent shear phonon generation and detection with ultrashort optical pulses

Using an optical technique we generate and detect picosecond shear and quasishear coherent acoustic phonon pulses in the time domain. Thermoelastic and piezoelectric generation are directly achieved by breaking the sample lateral symmetry using crystalline anisotropy. We demonstrate efficient detection in isotropic and anisotropic media with various optical incidence geometries.     

Third harmonic generation by ultrashort laser pulses tightly focused in air

The influence of focusing conditions (numerical apertures from 0.004 to 0.06) on absolute energetic characteristics of third harmonic generation (THG) in air was experimentally studied for pumping 1R (744 nm wavelength) femtosecond laser pulses. THG was observed both for sub-critical and super-critical laser pulses in the linear and non-linear propagation modes, respectively. The maximum THG efficiency of 1.6 × 10⁻³ was obtained in our experiments at the tight focusing conditions and the sub-critical pulse powers.     

THz optical pulses from a coupled-cavity quantum-dot laser

Optical pulses are generated from a coupled-cavity quantum-dot (QD) laser consisting of a short QD-waveguide Fabry–Perot (F–P) cavity and three long external fiber Bragg grating (FBG) cavities. When the laser is biased at low operation current, the feedback from the external cavities dominates and laser pulses have a 1.01 THz repetition rate, determined by the equal frequency difference of the three FBGs. We are thus able to decouple the repetition rate of a mode-locked laser from the cavity length. With much higher bias current, the QD F–P cavity dominates and the repetition rate is switched to 43.8 GHz, defined by the length of the F–P cavity.     

New laser crystals for the generation of ultrashort pulses

Since the beginning of the 1990s, titanium sapphire has become the crystal of choice for the development of ultrashort laser systems producing very short and powerful pulses using the Chirped Pulse Amplification technique. In parallel to these developments leading to commercial products, new laser crystals have been studied in order to reach directly other wavelength ranges and to overcome the need to develop cw or pulsed green laser to pump the titanium sapphire crystal. In order to be able to directly pump the crystals with a very efficient and high-power semiconductor laser, new crystals doped with chromium or ytterbium ions have been developed. This article will review the latest development in this research field with the best performances obtained in terms of pulse duration. To cite this article: F. Druon et al., C. R. Physique 8 (2007).     

Microablation with ultrashort laser pulses

This paper reports the micromachining results of different materials (Al, Si, InP and fused silica) using a Ti : sapphire laser at the wavelength of 800 and 267 nm with variable pulse lengths in the range from 100 fs to 10 ps. The hole arrays with a diameter up to a few μm through microdrilling are presented. We discussed how an effective suppression of the thermal diffusion inside the ablated materials and an effective microablation could be realized. If the laser fluence is taken only slightly above the threshold, a hole array can be drilled with diameters even smaller than the wavelength of the laser. Some examples are presented in the paper.     

Difference frequency generation by optical rectification of femtosecond laser pulse in GaAs crystal with a periodic domain structure

We study the influence of spatial boundedness of a femtosecond laser pulse (FLP) on the efficiency of generation of difference frequency radiation (DFR) in a GaAs crystal with a periodic domain structure. It is shown that at propagation of DFR a spectral-angular filtration occurs in the transverse distribution of the beam. An expression is obtained for the frequency-angular spectrum of DFR. For a pump pulse with the duration of 100 fs, the beam radius of 24μm, the energy of 30 nJ, and the wavelength of 1.98μm propagating in 1.716-mm long GaAs crystal with the domain structure period of 74.6μm the efficiency of generation of DFR at the wavelength of 14μm is calculated to be close to 2×10⁻⁶.     

Percolation-enhanced generation of terahertz pulses by optical rectification on ultrathin gold films

Emission of pulses of electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz range is observed when ultrathin gold films on glass are illuminated with femtosecond near-IR laser pulses. A distinct maximum is observed in the emitted terahertz amplitude from films of average thickness just above the percolation threshold. Our measurements suggest that the emission is through a second-order nonlinear optical rectification process, enhanced by the excitation of localized surface plasmon hot spots on the percolated metal film.     

Nonlinear second-harmonic pulse compression with tilted pulses

We demonstrate that the group velocities of interacting pulses can be adjusted by pulse tilting to optimize second-harmonic pulse compression for a variety of nonlinear crystals and wavelengths. As an experimental proof we present results of ninefold compression of 1.3-ps Nd:glass laser pulses in beta -barium borate crystal.     

Trends in ultrashort and ultrahigh power laser pulses based on optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

Since the proof-of-principle demonstration of optical parametric amplification to efficiently amplify chirped laser pulses in 1992,optical parametric chirped pulse amplification(OPCPA)became the most promising method for the amplification of broadband optical pulses.In the meantime,we are witnessing an exciting progress in the development of powerful and ultrashort pulse laser systems that employ chirped pulse parametric amplifiers.The output power and pulse duration of these systems have ranged from a few gigawatts to hundreds of terawatts with a potential of tens of petawatts power level.Meanwhile,the output pulse duration based on optical parametric amplification has entered the range of fewoptical-cycle field.In this paper,we overview the basic principles,trends in development,and current state of the ultrashort and laser systems based on OPCPA,respectively.