强场亚周期光脉冲研究

强场亚周期光脉冲的产生是未来激光光源发展所追求的先进内容之一,其不仅标志了超快激光技术的前进方向,并且将开启新型强场光与物质相互作用研究的大门。作为当前强场物理研究的一个重要课题——阿秒脉冲技术,强场亚周期光脉冲的出现将带给它新的发展机遇。强场亚周期光脉冲不仅可以直接产生极紫外波段孤立阿秒脉冲,而且其光电场的可裁剪性能够用来优化阿秒脉冲的产生。然而,亚周期光脉冲对应的超宽带光谱,使强场亚周期光脉冲的产生面临很大的挑战性。将多个中心波长不同的少周期超短脉冲进行合并的光场相干合成技术是实现强场亚周期光脉冲的有效技术。文章将介绍亚周期光脉冲的研究进展,着重描述基于光场相干合成技术的强场亚周期光脉冲产生方法。     

Optimized amplification of femtosecond optical pulses by dispersion management for octave-spanning optical frequency comb generation

We report a method for optimizing the amplification of femtosecond optical pulses by using dispersion management. The amount of dispersion provided to the seed optical pulse of an erbium-doped fiber (EBF) has an optimal region that enhances the output power of an amplifier. The power enhancement is accompanied by spectral broadening, which originates from adiabatic narrowing in the erbium-doped fiber. The amplified optical pulses can be used to generate an octave-spanning optical frequency comb (OFC) by employing a highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF).     

Formation and erasure of population difference gratings in the coherent interaction of a resonant medium with extremely short optical pulses

In the regime of coherent interaction of short optical pulses with a resonant medium, which is implemented with a pulse duration shorter than the relaxation times in the medium, the formation of population gratings can occur without overlapping the pulses therein. In this case, there are new possibilities for controlling optical pulses, which are especially pronounced for extremely short pulses. It is shown that, with the proper choice of the parameters of a sequence of extremely short optical pulses, not only the formation of population gratings, but also their erasure are possible. It is demonstrated that this effect can be used for the creation of an ultrahigh-speed optical deflector.     

Excitation of the spin density and current by coherent light pulses in quantum wells

We study the orbital and spin dynamics of charge carriers induced by non-overlapping linearly polarized light pulses in semiconductor quantum wells. It is shown that such an optical excitation with coherent pulses leads to a spin orientation of photocarriers and an electric current. The effects are caused by the interference of optical transitions driven by individual pulses. The distribution of carriers in the spin and momentum spaces depends on the crystallographic orientation of quantum wells and can be efficiently controlled by the pulse polarizations, time delay and phase shift between the pulses, as well as an external magnetic field.     

Chromatic-distortion compensation in splitting and focusing of femtosecond pulses by use of a pair of diffractive optical elements

We propose a simple optical system to compensate for chromatic distortion that occurs during fan-out of femtosecond pulses by diffractive optics. The proposed system comprises a pair of diffractive elements, one for splitting an incoming pulse and the other for focusing the split pulses. With an appropriate separation between the elements, chromatic distortion resulting from the spectral bandwidth of a femtosecond pulse is removed, and an array of focused pulses with the same dimensions can be obtained. The theory has been verified through optical and processing experiments with 100-fs, 800-nm pulses.     

Nonlinear optics with stationary pulses of light

We show that the recently demonstrated technique for generating stationary pulses of light [M. Bajcsy, A. S. Zibrov, and M. D. Lukin, Nature (London) 426, 638 (2003)] can be extended to localize optical pulses in all three spatial dimensions in a resonant atomic medium. This method can be used to dramatically enhance the nonlinear interaction between weak optical pulses. In particular, we show that an efficient Kerr-like interaction between two pulses can be implemented as a sequence of several purely linear optical processes. The resulting process may enable coherent interactions between single photon pulses.     

Multi-soliton generation with extremely narrow free spectrum range for multiplexed sensors via optical network

We propose a new system of multiplexer sensors using the localized soliton pulse generated by a microring resonator in optical networks. A large bandwidth signal is generated by a soliton pulse propagating within the microring resonator, which is allowed to form the multiplexed sensors. Two forms of soliton pulses are generated and localized, i.e. temporal and spatial solitons. The required soliton pulses with specified wavelengths can be localized and formed the sensing. This is formed by using an optical add/drop multiplexer incorporating in the optical network, where the localized soliton pulses are available for add/drop signals to/from the optical network. The change in physical parameter measured the change in soliton wavelength, which formed the measurement.     

Generation of 10-GHz duty-cycle tunable square optical pulse in an SOA-based mode-locked fiber laser

We demonstrate the generation of 10-GHz optical square pulses by injecting a picosecond pulse train into an SOA-based mode-locked fiber laser. The novel scheme exploits nonlinear effects and gain saturation phenomenon in the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). This technique uses gain-compression dynamics between the input pulses and the generated ones in gain-saturated SOA to form square pulses. The center wavelength of the generated optical square pulse can be tuned from 1530 to 1570 nm by adjusting the center wavelength of the optical band pass filter (OBPF) in the SOA-based mode-locked fiber ring laser. The duty cycle of the output pulse can be tuned from 12.7 to 88.4%, which strongly depends on the input power and intra-cavity power.     

Optical quantum transmitter with finesse of 30 at 800-nm central wavelength using microring resonators

A microring resonator (MRR) system incorporating an add/drop system is presented. The finesse of the proposed system can be determined using the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and free spectrum range (FSR) of the generated multiple soliton pulses. The central wavelength of the bright input soliton pulse has been selected as 800 nm, at which a ring system with better sensitivity shows high finesse that is suitable for applications to many optical communication systems such as optical transmitters and sensors. Simulation results show that FSR of 0.3 nm and 1.1 ns and FWHM of 10 pm and 36.6 ps could be obtained. Therefore, a system with finesse of 30 can be obtained; in such a system, the MRR system shows high performance. This system can be used in optical communication networks as a transmitter system for optical soliton pulses with finesse of 30, and theses pulses can be detected via an optical receiver.     

重复频率可调谐的超低抖动光窄脉冲源的研究

提出了一种新型的基于光电振荡器的重复频率可调谐的超低抖动光窄脉冲源. 光电振荡器系统可以产生超低相位噪声的微波信号; 被该信号调制的直调光经过两次相位调制之后, 使光脉冲的啁啾增强; 再通过一段色散补偿光纤, 光脉冲被进一步压窄. 实验中使用YIG可调滤波器, 可以得到8–12 GHz内步进为200 MHz的可调谐微波信号, 因此光脉冲的重复频率具有可调谐性. 当微波信号即脉冲重复频率为9.6 GHz时, 测得脉冲宽度为3.7 ps, 相位噪声为-130.1 dBc/Hz@10 kHz. 由此得出光脉冲的瞬时抖动为60.1 fs (100 Hz–1 MHz), 因此该方案产生的光窄脉冲源具有超低的抖动.     

Generation of 40-GHz control signals from flag pulses for switching all-optical gates for use with optical packets

We demonstrate an all-optical circuit capable of generating 40-GHz control signals from flag pulses that can be used to define the switching state of all-optical gates for use with optical packets. The circuit comprises a Fabry-Perot filter and a semiconductor optical amplifier, and with a single pulse it can generate 12 control pulses with 0.64-dB amplitude modulation. With two and three flag pulses the number of control pulses becomes 36 and 54, respectively.     

Dynamically phase-matched terahertz generation

We present the generation of intense terahertz pulses by optical rectification of 780 nm pulses in a large area gallium phosphide crystal. The velocity mismatch between optical and terahertz pulses thereby limits the bandwidth of the terahertz pulses. We show that this limitation can be overcome by a dynamic modification of the refractive index of the gallium phosphide crystal through generation of hot phonons. This is confirmed by excellent agreement between experimental results and model calculations.     

与794nm飞秒激光精确同步的无直流背底的1064nm脉冲光的产生

基于非共线光参量放大(NOPA)，以宽带794nm飞秒激光的倍频光为抽运光，以连续的He-Ne激光为信号光，产生了与宽带794nm飞秒激光精确同步的无直流背底的1064nm的脉冲光.实验结果显示该1064nm的光脉冲可作为光参量啁啾脉冲放大系统的抽运激光链的种子光，从而实现用全光学方法实现OPCPA系统抽运光和信号光的精确同步.还将非共线光参量放大器置于经特殊设计的He-Ne激光腔内，也同样成功得到了无直流背底的1064nm的光脉冲.经一次光参量放大后所得到的1064nm光的光谱和空间啁啾特性与非共线光参量放大器置于He-Ne激光腔外时得到的1064nm的光脉冲相同，而其单脉冲能量约为腔外NOPA的10倍. 关键词： 非线性光参量放大 光参量啁啾脉冲放大 时间同步     

Design considerations for a compact grism stretcher for non-collinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification

The dispersion management of a non-collinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier is presented. A stretcher based on a combination of a grating and a prism pair (grism) is given and analyzed in detail. This combination can provide up to 300 nm acceptance bandwidth and is suitable for parametric amplification of few-cycle pulses. The amplified pulses can be compressed by the dispersion of optical glasses such as SF57 and the residual high-order dispersion may be compensated by adaptive optical filters and chirped mirrors.     

Demonstration of the interaction between two stopped light pulses

This study reports the first experimental demonstration that two light pulses were made motionless and interacted with each other through a medium. The scheme with motionless light pulses maximizes the interaction time and can achieve a considerable efficiency even below single-photon level. To demonstrate the enhancement of optical nonlinear efficiency, the experiment in this study used the process of one optical pulse switched by another based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency. Moving light pulses activate switching at an energy per area of 2 photons per atomic absorption cross section as discussed in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4611 (1999)]. This study demonstrates that motionless light pulses can activate switching at 0.56 photons per atomic absorption cross section, and that the light level can be further reduced by increasing the optical density of the medium. The result of this work enters a new regime of low-light physics.     

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.     

Two-stage optical pulse compression for a mode-locking SOAFL driven by an asymmetric-duty-cycle square wave

We demonstrate ultra-short optical pulses by using a two-stage compression of pulses from a mode-locking SOAFL driven by the injection of a periodic square wave with an asymmetric duty cycle. Through cascading a linear compressor of 110-m dispersion compensation fiber and a soliton compressor of 12-m single-mode fiber, the optical pulses can be shortened to 55 fs with a timing jitter of 0.45 ps. In the ninth-order soliton compression, the spectral linewidth of the mode-locking SOAFL pulses can be broadened by the self-phase-modulation effect. Also, the compression performance includes a time-bandwidth product up to 0.437 and a pulse-compressing ratio of 54.     

Nonlinear optical propagation and self-limiting effect in liquid-crystalline fibers

The nonlinear optical properties of the isotropic phase of liquid crystals induced by nanosecond laser pulses are analyzed in the context of nonlinear multi-mode propagation in a liquid-crystal-cored fiber. The negative thermal density nonlinearity of the core gives rise to an intensity-dependent loss in the core-guided transmission and optical action. Experiments conducted with such liquid-crystal-cored fibers show that the optical limiting threshold for nanosecond laser pulses can be as low as 0.09 J/cm², which is one of the lowest among known nonlinear optical materials and structures, including bulk liquid-crystal films.     

基于单模光纤的交叉相位调制型频率分辨光学开关超短脉冲测量

利用单模光纤中的光弹效应和交叉相位调制(XPM)效应,提出了一种频率分辨光学开关法测量超短脉冲的新方案.在本方案中,单模光纤的前一部分产生可变延迟,后一部分作为非线性介质产生非线性效应.该方案只需一根单模光纤,无须复杂的光路校准,结构简单,损耗低;光纤中的XPM效应易发生,无须相位匹配.对提出的方案进行了数值模拟,采用基于矩阵的主元素广义投影算法,恢复出待测脉冲的幅度和相位信息,并研究了光纤长度和待测超短脉冲的脉冲宽度对测量结果的影响.结果表明:测量准确度随着光纤长度的增加而提高,选取长度为2 km的光纤,就可以实现对超短脉冲的准确测量;本文方案适用于脉冲宽度不小于80 fs的超短光脉冲的测量.