October 2018
Spotlight Summary by James R. Taylor
Normal-dispersion fiber optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification
Ultrafast fiber lasers are increasingly finding wide application, particularly in industry. In order to overcome pulse energy limitations, because of nonlinearity, all-fiber chirped pulse amplification schemes have been applied and the technique of fiber optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (FOPCPA) has been very actively investigated, allowing spectral flexibility combined with high pulse energy and peak power. This study from the Cornell University group reports on FOPCPA utilizing a chirped pump-pulse in the normally dispersive regime. This allows wide spectral separation and tunability of the generated signal and idler wavelengths, as distinct from operation in the anomalously dispersive regime with its narrower spectral operational regimes.
Based on a linearly polarized 30-ps, 500-nJ, 1.03-µm chirped pump pulse at 1.2 MHz repetition rate from a Yb-based fiber laser system, in combination with a 40-mW narrow line CW operated laser-diode seed signal at 850 nm, which negated synchronization problems, up to 12% conversion to the idler around 1.3 µm was achieved, which was subsequently compressed to 210 fs. The authors demonstrated energy scalability, but with compromised compressed pulses that exhibited structure, which should be correctable. Of particular note is the theoretically predicted claim that microjoule pulses with femtosecond durations should be achievable with this interesting, wavelength-versatile source.
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Based on a linearly polarized 30-ps, 500-nJ, 1.03-µm chirped pump pulse at 1.2 MHz repetition rate from a Yb-based fiber laser system, in combination with a 40-mW narrow line CW operated laser-diode seed signal at 850 nm, which negated synchronization problems, up to 12% conversion to the idler around 1.3 µm was achieved, which was subsequently compressed to 210 fs. The authors demonstrated energy scalability, but with compromised compressed pulses that exhibited structure, which should be correctable. Of particular note is the theoretically predicted claim that microjoule pulses with femtosecond durations should be achievable with this interesting, wavelength-versatile source.
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Article Information
Normal-dispersion fiber optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification
Walter Fu and Frank W. Wise
Opt. Lett. 43(21) 5331-5334 (2018) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF