Versatile and scalable pulse compression platform
Versatile and scalable pulse compression platform
Résumé
We report on a user-friendly sub-100 fs nonlinear pulse compression platform named FastLas. The compressor is based on gas fillable inhibited-coupling fibers and can be scaled over a large parameter-space of the input pulse. OCIS codes: 320.5520, 320.7140, 060.5295 1. Introduction Over the last two decades, ultra-short pulse (USP) lasers have witnessed a dramatic progress in their design, performance and in their applications. Nowadays, commercially available table-top lasers emitting pulses with duration of hundreds of femtosecond and milli-Joule energy have become a common place. Among the most representative of these USP lasers, we count Ti:Sapph laser emitting at around 800 nm for, Yb-based laser emitting around 1 µm, and Er-based laser emitting around 1.5 µm, and their frequency-doubled and tripled versions. Within this landscape, the laser pulse-duration is often larger than 100 fs, and achieving sub-100 fs pulse duration still remains a challenge. Among the limiting factors in pulse compression is the narrow gain-bandwidth of some lasers (e.g. Yb-based and Er-based lasers), which requires further spectral-broadening followed with a post-compression, and/or nonlinear compression. Furthermore, even with larger gain bandwidth lasers such as Ti:Sapph, complex setup are required for efficient dispersion compensation. Finally, the high sensitivity of current pulse-compression schemes to well defined parameter set of the input laser such as pulse energy, pulse duration, and wavelength, makes it extremely challenging to have efficient and scalable USP compressors. This situation is illustrated by state-of-the-art of Yb-based lasers. The latter offers a superior power-scaling, it can be operated in different operational modes, such as emitting from CW regime to 100 fs pulses with repetition rate from kHz to GHz repetition rate. Achieving sub-100 fs remains a challenging task despite the implementation of ingenious schemes to overpass this limitation [1]. In turn, this limits their impact in some of the emerging industrial applications where processing of some materials such as dielectric or semiconductor require 10-100 µJ level pulses with pulse-width below 300 fs. Here, we exploit the engineerable dispersion, the broadband transmission and high energy handling of Inhibted-Coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (IC-HCPCF) to propose a USP compression platform coined FastLas, which operates on energy range between few microjoules to hundred microjoules and efficient for a wide variety of wavelengths.
Domaines
Optique / photonique
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)