混合加宽的宽带钕玻璃激光系统的放大特性研究

通过宽带激光脉冲放大的物理模型,以数值模拟为工具,研究分析了激光系统对不同带宽脉冲的放大能力,以及交叉弛豫时间对脉冲放大特性的影响.计算结果表明,随着带宽的增加,激光系统的输出能力逐渐降低,在其他条件相同时,宽带分别为2,5和10 nm时的输出能量比窄带输出（3000 J,1 ns脉宽）时分别减小了约2％,11％和27％;在带宽为几个纳米时完全非均匀加宽比完全均匀加宽的输出能量（3000 J,1 ns脉宽）降低了约20％;初步确定了交叉弛豫时间的范围为0—10 ns. 关键词： 激光系统 宽带激光 放大过程 交叉弛豫     

光参量啁啾脉冲放大过程中脉冲特性理论研究

 通过数值求解非线性三波耦合方程组,并利用色散致啁啾引起的瞬时频率与时间的关系,模拟了啁啾脉冲在光参量放大过程中的脉冲波形和频谱形状的变化关系,以及通过压缩器的脉冲形状。模拟结果表明：啁啾脉冲在光参量放大过程中的时域宽度和频谱有很小程度的加宽,但基本上不影响放大后脉冲的压缩及信噪比。     

光参量啁啾脉冲放大过程中脉冲特性理论研究

通过数值求解非线性三波耦合方程组,并利用色散致啁啾引起的瞬时频率与时间的关系,模拟了啁啾脉冲在光参量放大过程中的脉冲波形和频谱形状的变化关系,以及通过压缩器的脉冲形状。模拟结果表明：啁啾脉冲在光参量放大过程中的时域宽度和频谱有很小程度的加宽,但基本上不影响放大后脉冲的压缩及信噪比。     

Filamentational instability of partially coherent femtosecond optical pulses in air

The filamentational instability of spatially broadband femtosecond optical pulses in air is investigated by means of a kinetic wave equation for spatially incoherent photons. An explicit expression for the spatial amplification rate is derived and analyzed. It is found that the spatial spectral broadening of the pulse can lead to stabilization of the filamentation instability. Thus optical smoothing techniques could optimize current applications of ultrashort laser pulses, such as atmospheric remote sensing.     

Influences of finite gain bandwidth on pulse propagation in parabolic fiber amplifiers with distributed gain profiles

The evolutions of the pulses propagating in decreasing and increasing gain distributed fiber amplifiers with finite gain bandwidths are investigated by simulations with the nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation. The results show that the parabolic pulse propagations in both the decreasing and the increasing gain amplifiers are restricted by the finite gain bandwidth. For a given input pulse, by choosing a small initial gain coefficient and gain variation rate, the whole gain for the pulse amplification limited by the gain bandwidth may be higher, which is helpful for the enhancement of the output linearly chirped pulse energy. Compared to the decreasing gain distributed fiber amplifier, the increasing gain distributed amplifier may be more conducive to suppress the pulse spectral broadening and increase the critical amplifier length for achieving a larger output linearly chirped pulse energy.     

Low temperature enhancement of alignment-induced spectral broadening of femtosecond laser pulses

The propagation of femtosecond laser pulses in N2-filled hollow fibers is studied both theoretically and experimentally. The laser pulse aligns the N2 molecules and changes the refractive index, which meanwhile modulates the spectrum of the pulse in turn. The dependence of the spectral modulation on the gas temperature is investigated. We find that both spectral broadening and frequency red-shift are enhanced at low temperature. The degree of enhancement is found to be dependent on the pulse duration. Based on our findings, we propose a method for femtosecond pulse spectral broadening and few-cycle pulse generation via the molecular alignment.     

High-energy saturable absorber mode-locked fiber laser system

We demonstrate a mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser with a 1-microm InGaAs saturable absorber that produces 84-ps, 1-nJ transform-limited pulses. Measurements of the InGaAs multiple quantum well revealed a slow saturable absorber that is useful for passive mode locking. Optical fiber was added to extend the cavity and vary the repetition rate from 51 kHz to 5.4 MHz. The narrow spectral width of the laser output (<0.04 nm) permits amplification to 0.2 microJ/pulse with minimal pulse broadening. Pulse energies as large as 1.7 microJ can be achieved with pulse widths of <330 ps. Average powers of 0.5 W at megahertz repetition rates are demonstrated.     

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).     

Influences of finite gain bandwidth on pulse propagating in parabolic fiber amplifiers with distributed gain profiles

The evolutions of the pulses propagating in decreasing and increasing gain distributed fiber amplifiers with finite gain bandwidths are investigated by simulating with the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The results show that the parabolic pulse propagations in both the decreasing and the increasing gain amplifiers are restricted by the finite gain bandwidth. For a given input pulse, by choosing small initial gain coefficient and gain variation rate, the whole gain for the pulse amplification limited by the gain bandwidth may be higher, which is helpful to the enhancement of the output linearly chirped pulse energy. Compared to the decreasing gain distributed fiber amplifier, the increasing gain distributed amplifier may be more conducive to suppress the pulse spectral broadening and increase the critical amplifier length for achieving a larger output linearly chirped pulse energy.     

1 MHz repetition rate hollow fiber pulse compression to sub-100-fs duration at 100 W average power

We report on nonlinear pulse compression at very high average power. A high-power fiber chirped pulse amplification system based on a novel large pitch photonic crystal fiber delivers 700 fs pulses with 200 μJ pulse energy at a 1 MHz repetition rate, resulting in 200 W of average power. Subsequent spectral broadening in a xenon-filled hollow-core fiber and pulse compression with chirped mirrors is employed for pulse shortening and peak power enhancement. For the first time, to our knowledge, more than 100 W of average power are transmitted through a noble-gas-filled hollow fiber. After pulse compression of 81 fs, 93 μJ pulses are obtained at a 1 MHz repetition rate.     

钕玻璃宽带激光放大能量提取效率研究

基于钕玻璃宽带脉冲激光放大模型,采用数值模拟的方法,研究了钕玻璃放大器对不同输入光通量、不同脉宽以及不同带宽(或波长分布)脉冲激光放大的能量提取效率。计算结果表明,钕玻璃宽带放大能量提取效率随着输入光通量的增加而提高,并最终趋于某一定值。对于以均匀加宽为主的介质,随着带宽的增加,能量提取效率逐渐下降;对于以非均匀加宽为主的介质,随着带宽的增加,能量提取效率先逐渐升高,达到最大值后开始下降。对于均匀加宽与非均匀加宽线宽比为0.1的混合加宽介质,在饱和通量输入条件下,使用宽带激光能够带来大约80%的效率提升。     

High-Power Extracavity Pulse Compression in Solid Materials

A novel technique for high-power extracavity pulse compression with a nonlinear solid material is demonstrated. Before spectral broadening by self-phase modulation in the solid material, a short filament generated in argon is used as a spatial filter, which works for a uniform spectrum broadening over the spatial profile. Compensated by chirped mirrors, a 15-fs pulse is generated from a 32-fs input laser pulse. A total transmission larger than 80% after the solid material is achieved.     

Effect of the Doppler broadening on the nonlinear amplification of a polarized wave that propagates in a resonant medium without population inversion

The general nonlinear stationary theory of propagation of an elliptically polarized pulse that resonantly interacts with the 1/2-1/2 transition is developed taking into account relaxation processes. It is shown that interference of magnetic sublevels in the field of polarized radiation that optically pumps atoms results in inversionless amplification of radiation. Taking into account the Doppler broadening of spectral lines shows that there exists a certain optimal length of the resonant medium along which the radiation that emerges from the medium is maximally amplified.     

皮秒光纤激光脉冲两个关键问题的研究

窄带耗散孤子锁模光纤激光器可以产生接近变换限制的皮秒脉冲,但受非线性相移的限制,输出脉冲重复频率不能通过增加腔长来降低,脉冲能量仅在0.1 nJ以下,严重制约着这类皮秒脉冲的实际应用。提出一种通过耦合器抽取腔内脉冲能量、抑制腔内非线性相移积累,进而允许增加腔长来降低窄带耗散孤子皮秒光纤激光脉冲重复频率的方法。运用该方法,成功地将激光器重复频率由35.2 MHz降低到了1.77 MHz,且脉冲时频特性保持不变。提出了一种基于级间FBG陷波滤波的抑制皮秒脉冲光纤放大中光谱展宽的方法。通过简单地使用级间陷波滤波器,既可窄化第一级光纤放大器后的输出脉冲谱宽,允许采用第二级光纤放大器进一步提升脉冲能量,而且,还可将脉冲重塑为近高斯形,利用高斯脉冲光谱展宽斜率小的特点,允许第二级光纤放大器将脉冲能量提升得更高。利用该方法,在RMS（均方值）谱宽保持0.4 nm以内的前提下,10 ps脉冲经标准单模光纤放大器后,能量可由0.2 nJ可提升到10 nJ以上。     

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.     

Quantum Dot Versus Quantum Well Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers for Subpicosecond Pulse Amplification

The performance of quantum well and quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers was theoretically investigated. The effects on subpicosecond pulse propagation due to gain and refractive index dispersion, calculated using a microscopic polarization equation and a reduced wave equation in the linear regime including the background refractive index dispersion, were used in the comparison. In particular, the spectral shift and phase modulation imposed on the pulse were compared. It is shown that quantum dot amplifiers suffer comparable spectral shifts to the quantum well amplifier, strong linear frequency chirp and large pulse broadening. In quantum dot amplifiers with small inhomogeneous broadening, similar pulse break-up is shown as that calculated for the quantum well amplifier. In quantum dot amplifiers with large inhomogeneous broadening, the background refractive index dispersion makes the linear frequency chirp the dominant feature. In the light of our calculations, the advantages and disadvantages of quantum dot and quantum well amplifiers are discussed.     

Predicting supercontinuum pulse collisions with simulations exhibiting temporal aliasing

Interactions between supercontinuum (SC) light pulses, produced by the propagation of rapidly sequenced picosecond pump laser pulses along a photonic crystal fiber, result in spectral broadening, which we attribute to interpulse soliton collisions. This phenomenon was measured experimentally, following our observation of spectral broadening in numerical simulations that exhibit so-called "pulse wraparound" or "temporal aliasing." This occurs in simulations with narrow time grids: as early parts of the SC pulse leave the computational time domain, they "reenter" at the beginning and so interact with later parts of the evolving SC pulse. We show that this provides an effective model to predict the experimentally observed spectral changes.     

Spectral features associated with nonlinear pulse compression in Bragg gratings

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, direct spectral measurements of nonlinear spectral broadening caused by nonlinear propagation through Bragg gratings written on integrated AlGaAs waveguides. The spectral broadening is associated with pulse compression from 400 to 80 ps. The high nonlinearity of AlGaAs enables high-repetition-rate, low-peak-power sources to be used, facilitating easy spectral measurements.     

Optimal pulse compression in long hollow fibers

The spectral broadening performance of 1 m and 3 m long hollow fibers are compared. The 3 m capillary clearly outperforms the 1 m one in terms of both transmission and achievable spectral broadening. Starting from 1.1 mJ 71 fs pulses at 780 nm, a spectral broadening ratio of 26 was achieved using a single 3 m long argon-filled hollow fiber. After compression the measured pulse duration was 4.5 fs corresponding to a compression ratio of 16 at an energy of 0.42 mJ. Both the pulse duration and the pulse energy were limited by the applied chirped mirrors.     

Fiber optical parametric oscillator for sub-50 fs pulse generation: optimization of fiber length

We demonstrate generation of 48fs pulses with linear chirp using a short (27mm) fiber optical parametric oscillator (FOPO), which is synchronously pumped by a mode-locked ytterbium-doped fiber laser. We also study the pulse quality for both the short- and long-wavelength operation where the fiber length inside of the oscillator varies from 17 to 61mm. The optimal pulse duration is observed only in the short-wavelength operation. Furthermore, we model the FOPO system as a single-pass parametric amplifier including dispersive pulse broadening and walk-off between the pump and output. The optimal condition arises from the minimization of the walk-off and dispersion. When walk-off is large, the parametric amplification process is most efficient over some reduced effective fiber length, leading to an upper limit in the amount of the observed pulse broadening.