Abstract

Recently it was shown that Kerr instability via degenerate four-wave mixing can amplify single-cycle Gaussian seed pulses from the visible to the deep infrared [Optica 5, 271 (2018 [CrossRef]  )]. Pump-to-seed energy conversion efficiency was found to be around 0.15–0.2%, which is lower than that of conventional second-order nonlinear optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs). Here we show that replacing the Gaussian seed with a Bessel–Gaussian seed can yield efficiencies around 1%, which is comparable with OPAs. This increase in efficiency is a result of improved overlap between the seed beam and the Kerr instability amplification profile. Further, the transverse symmetry of the Bessel–Gaussian profile results in no spatial walk-off between pump and seed beams, and hence amplification at longer wavelengths than in the Gaussian case is possible.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

Theory of Kerr instability amplification

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Optica 5(3) 271-278 (2018)

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