Abstract

Power-scalable ultrafast mid-IR coherent radiation plays an important role in strong field physics for driving nonlinear optical frequency conversion, such as high harmonic and x-ray generation. The most promising route to access the wavelength range >4 µm connected with scalability of the pulse energy relies on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) using non-oxide crystals, like ZGP or CSP [1]. A further key element is a high-performance pulsed 2-µm pump source. Using such 2-µm pump sources 100 fs pulses at 5.2 µm have been generated at 1 kHz with pulse energy of 80 µJ [2]. Recently, 180 fs pulses at 7 µm with energy of 200 µJ were demonstrated, however, operating at a rather low repetition rate of 100 Hz [1]. Here we present a 1 kHz ultrashort pulse OPCPA source delivering 1.3 mJ pulses at 5 µm with sub-200 fs duration.

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