Towards high power broad-band OPCPA at 3000 nm
arXiv:1908.01879 · doi:10.1364/OE.27.031330
Abstract
High-energy femtosecond laser pulses in the mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength range are essential for a wide range of applications from strong-field physics to selectively pump and probe low energy excitations in condensed matter and molecular vibrations. Here we report a four stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier (OPCPA) which generates ultrashort pulses at a central wavelength of 3000 nm with 430 J energy per pulse at a bandwidth of 490 nm. Broadband emission of a Ti:sapphire oscillator seeds synchronously the four OPCPA stages at 800 nm and the pump line at 1030 nm. The first stage amplifies the 800 nm pulses in BBO using a non-collinear configuration. The second stage converts the wavelength to 1560 nm using difference frequency generation in BBO in a collinear geometry. The third stage amplifies this idler frequency non-collinearly in KTA. Finally, the fourth stage generates the 3000 nm radiation in a collinear configuration in LiIO due the broad amplification bandwidth this crystal provides. We compress these pulses to 65 fs by transmission through sapphire. Quantitative calculations of the individual non-linear processes in all stages verify that our OPCPA architecture operates close to optimum efficiency at minimum absorption losses, which suggests that this particular design is very suitable for operation a high average power at multi kHz repetition rates.
arXiv comment6 figures
References in corpus (5)
- Bright Coherent Ultrahigh Harmonics in the keV X-Ray Regime from Mid-Infrared Femtosecond Lasers
- Phase matching of high harmonic generation in the soft and hard X-ray regions of the spectrum
- Terawatt-level few-cycle mid-IR pulses through nonlinear self-compression in bulk
- Laser wakefield acceleration with mid-IR laser pulses
- White-light-seeded, CEP-stable, 4.5-W, 4-micron KTA parametric amplifier driven by a 1.4-ps Yb:YAG thin disk laser