KEYWORDS: Crystals, Picosecond phenomena, Deep ultraviolet, Ultraviolet radiation, Nozzles, Frequency conversion, Thermography, Polarization, Optical surfaces, Laser systems engineering, High power lasers
We report on high average-power, high-energy picosecond fourth-harmonic generation in LBO. The first stages of a Yb:YAG laser chain operating at 1 kHz repetition rate generate few-picosecond 220 mJ chirped pulses at 1030 nm fundamental wavelength. They are frequency-converted in a cascade of three LBO crystals to generate the second-, third-, and fourth harmonics at 515 nm, 343 nm and 257 nm respectively. Crystals thicknesses and angular phase matching detuning were calculated as a function of pulse duration through broadband nonlinear optical numerical simulations. Last crystal is both conduction-cooled on edge and surface-cooled at center through forced-air flow to mitigate heating due to nonlinear absorption in the deep-UV and reduce temperature gradients. Chirped-pulse duration was experimentally adjusted to achieve stable 20% overall conversion efficiency. Near-field beam profiles were continuously recorded at 10 Hz, for all four wavelengths involved, together with corresponding energies, showing no significant beam degradation over 50 hours. Temperatures of the two last crystals were monitored and will help optimize surface cooling for future power ramping-up.
Controlled few-cycle light waveforms find numerous applications in attosecond science, most notably the production of isolated attosecond pulses in the XUV spectral region for studying ultrafast electronic processes in matter. Scaling up the pulse energy of few-cycle pulses could extend the scope of applications to even higher intensity processes, such as the generation of attosecond pulses with extreme brightness from relativistic plasma mirrors. Hollow-fiber compressors are widely used to produce few-cycle pulses with excellent spatiotemporal quality, whereby octave-spanning broadened spectra can be temporally compressed to near-single-cycle duration. In order to scale up the peak power of hollow-fiber compressors, the effective length and area mode of the fiber has to be increased proportionally, thereby requiring the use of longer waveguides with larger apertures. Thanks to an innovative design utilizing stretched flexible capillaries, we show that a stretched hollow-fiber compressor can generate pulses of TW peak power, the duration of which can be continuously tuned from the input seed laser pulse duration down to almost a single cycle (3.5fs at 750nm central wavelength) simply by increasing the gas pressure at the fiber end. The pulses are characterized online using an integrated d-scan device directly under vacuum. While the pulse duration and chirp are tuned, all other pulse characteristics, such as energy, pointing stability and focal distribution remain the same on target. This unique device makes it possible to explore the generation of high-energy attosecond XUV pulses from plasma mirrors using controllable relativistic-intensity light waveforms at 1kHz.
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