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Investigation of a grating-based stretcher/compressor for carrier-envelope phase stabilized fs pulses

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Abstract

In this work, we experimentally investigate the effect of a grating based pulse stretcher/compressor on the carrier-envelope phase stability of femtosecond pulses. Grating based stretcher-compressor (SC) setups have been avoided in past demonstrations of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) of carrier envelope phase (CEP) stabilized femtosecond pulses, because they were expected to introduce significantly stronger CEP fluctuations than material-based SC systems. Using a microstructure fiber-based detection setup, we measure CEP fluctuations of ΔΦCE,SC=340 milliradians rms for a frequency range from 63 mHz to 102 kHz for pulses propagating through the SC setup. When bypassing the beam path through the SC, we find CEP fluctuations of ΔΦCE,bypass=250 milliradians rms. These values contain significant contributions from amplitude-to-phase conversion in our microstructure fiber-based detection setup for ΔΦCE. Hence, we do not unambiguously measure any added CEP noise intrinsic to the SC setup. To distinguish between intrinsic SC effects and amplitude-to-phase conversion, we introduce controlled beam pointing fluctuations Δα and again compare the phase noise introduced when passing through/bypassing the SC. Our measurements do not reveal any intrinsic effects of the SC system, but allow us to place an upper limit on the sensitivity of our SC system of ΔΦCEintrinsic,SCα<13000 rad/rad. Our results demonstrate experimentally that there is not a strong coupling mechanism between CEP and beam pointing through a stretcher/compressor, as well as measuring significantly smaller CEP fluctuations than experimental results reported previously.

©2004 Optical Society of America

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Figures (3)

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. The setup consists of a prism-based fs laser coupled into a grating-based stretcher-compressor (SC). Two microstructure-based setups measure the offset frequency of the phase-locked laser spectra, after the oscillator (in-loop, f0) and after the SC (out of loop, f0’). These are converted into phase fluctuations using Eq.1. The difference between CEP fluctuations introduced inside and outside the oscillator stabilization loop are measured by mixing f0-f0’, and FFT analyzed. Optionally the beam bypasses the SC. A swivel mirror before the SC allows introduction of controlled beam pointing fluctuations.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Comparison in CEP fluctuations a) passing through the SC, b) bypassing the SC.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Measurements of carrier-envelope phase-fluctuations ΔΦCE, power fluctuations ΔPrms and the ratio of both, when beam pointing fluctuations Δα are introduced.(a–c): data for stretcher-compressor, (d–f): data for bypassing beam.

Equations (2)

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f 0 f rep = Δ Φ CE 2 π
Δ Φ CE , SC = 2 f u f l Δ Φ CE , SC , rms 2 Hz d f
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