Damian N. Schimpf

Millijoule pulse energy high repetition rate femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplification system

We report on an ytterbium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) system delivering millijoule level pulse energy at repetition rates above 100 kHz corresponding to an average power of more than 100 W. The compressed pulses are as short as 800 fs. As the main amplifier, an 80 microm core diameter short length photonic crystal fiber is employed, which allows the generation of pulse energies up to 1.45 mJ with a B-integral as low as 7 at a stretched pulse duration of 2 ns. A stretcher-compressor unit consisting of dielectric diffraction gratings is capable of handling the average power without beam and pulse quality distortions. To our knowledge, we present the highest pulse energy ever extracted from fiber based femtosecond laser systems, and a nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher repetition rate than in previously published millijoule-level fiber CPA systems.

Supercontinuum generation by femtosecond single and dual wavelength pumping in photonic crystal fibers with two zero dispersion wavelengths

We investigate supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers under femtosecond single and dual wavelength pumping experimentally and by numerical simulations. Details about the expansion of the blue but also the red side of the continuum due to cross-phase modulation (XPM) and transfer of energy to dispersive waves are revealed and experimentally confirmed. Additionally, simple guidelines are given to predicte the maximum bandwidth of supercontinuum generation only by the use of the dispersion curve of the fiber.

Efficient high-power generation of visible and mid-infrared light by degenerate four-wave-mixing in a large-mode-area photonic-crystal fiber

An efficient and simple approach for converting pulsed near-IR laser radiation into visible and mid-IR light by exploiting degenerate four-wave-mixing in an endlessly single-mode, large-mode-area photonic-crystal fiber is presented. Coupling a 1 MHz, 200 ps, 8 W average power pulsed source emitting at 1064 nm into this fiber results in average powers of 3 W at 673 nm signal wavelength and of 450 mW at 2539 nm idler wavelength, respectively. The excellent pulse energy conversion efficiencies of 35% for the signal and 6% for the idler wavelength are due to the unique combination of characteristics of this type of fiber.

Compensation of pulse-distortion in saturated laser amplifiers.

We derive an expression describing pre-compensation of pulse-distortion due to saturation effects in short pulse laser-amplifiers. The analytical solution determines the optimum input pulse-shape required to obtain any arbitrary target pulse-shape at the output of the saturated laser-amplifier. The relation is experimentally verified using an all-fiber amplifier chain that is seeded by a directly modulated laser-diode. The method will prove useful in applications of high power, high energy laser-amplifier systems that need particular pulse-shapes to be efficient, e.g. micromachining and scientific laser-matter-interactions.

High Repetition Rate Gigawatt Peak Power Fiber Laser Systems: Challenges, Design, and Experiment

We review the main challenges and give design guidelines for high-peak-power high-average-power fiber-based chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) systems. It is clearly pointed out that the lowest order fiber nonlinearity (NL), namely the self-phase modulation, limits the scalability of high-energy ultrashort pulse fiber amplifiers. Therefore, a distinguished difference arises between the consequences of accumulated nonlinear phase originating from the pulse envelope and initial weak modulations, resulting in a strong recommendation to operate an amplification system as linearly as possible in order to generate high-contrast pulses. Low-NL rare-earth-doped fibers, such as the recently available designs of photonic crystal fibers, are the key element for successful peak power scaling in fiber laser systems. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis and optimization of the extraction characteristics in connection with the accumulated nonlinear phase in such extreme fiber dimensions. Consequently, millijoule pulse energy femtosecond pulses at repetition rates in the 100 kHz range have already been demonstrated experimentally in a Yb-fiber-based CPA system that has even further scaling potential.

90 W average power 100 μJ energy femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplification system

We report on an ytterbium-doped fiber based chirped-pulse amplification system delivering 100 microJ pulse energy at a repetition rate of 900 kHz, corresponding to an average power of 90 W. The emitted pulses are as short as 500 fs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power ever reported for high-energy femtosecond solid-state laser systems.

High repetition rate fiber amplifier pumped sub-20 fs optical parametric amplifier

We report on a high repetition rate noncollinear optical parametric amplifier system (NOPA) based on a cavity dumped Ti:Sapphire oscillator providing the signal, and an Ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier pumping the device. Temporally synchronized NOPA pump pulses are created via soliton generation in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. This soliton is fiber amplified to high pulse-energies at high repetition rates. The broadband Ti:Sapphire laser pulses are parametrically amplified either directly or after additional spectral broadening. The approach of fiber-based pump-pulse generation from a femtosecond laser, that emits in the spectral region of NOPA-gain, offers enhanced long-term stability and pulse quality compared to conventional techniques, such as signal pulse generation from a high power laser system via filamentation in bulk media. The presented system produces high-energy ultra-short pulses with pulse-durations down to 15.6 fs and pulse-energies up to 500 nJ at a repetition rate as high as 2 MHz.

The impact of spectral modulations on the contrast of pulses of nonlinear chirped-pulse amplification systems

A detrimental pulse distortion mechanism inherent to nonlinear chirped-pulse amplification systems is revealed and analyzed. When seeding the nonlinear amplification stage with pulses possessing weak side-pulses, the Kerr-nonlinearity causes a transfer of energy from the main pulse to side pulses. The resulting decrease in pulse contrast is determined by the accumulated nonlinear phase-shift (i.e., the B-integral) and the initial pulse-contrast. The energy transfer can be described by Bessel-functions. Thus, applications relying on a high pulse-contrast demand a low B-integral of the amplification system and a master-oscillator that exhibits an excellent pulse-contrast. In particular, nonlinear fiber CPA-systems operated at B-integrals far beyond pi have to be revised in this context.

Controlling the influence of SPM in fiber-based chirped-pulse amplification systems by using an actively shaped parabolic spectrum

We report on the experimental demonstration of the control of the influence of nonlinearity in fiber-based chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) using active spectral amplitude shaping. By applying a liquid crystal spatial light modulator, the influence of the spectral profile on the recompressed pulse quality is experimentally revealed. The parabolic spectrum is experimentally determined to be very suitable for CPA-systems in which nonlinearity is present. The corresponding nonlinear phase contribution can be efficiently compensated by a conventional grating compressor. In a proof-of-principle experiment using an Yb-doped fiber- CPA-system, control at a B-integral as high as 16 rad is demonstrated. The method allows significant performance improvement of fiber-based chirpedpulse amplification.

Theoretical analysis of the gain bandwidth for noncollinear parametric amplification of ultrafast pulses

The choice of optimum phase-matching conditions for noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers is usually made on the basis of the linear spectral dispersion characteristics of the anisotropic nonlinear crystal. However, for high-peak-power operation, where pump depletion is involved, it is shown that the tolerance of the parametric gain with regard to k-vector mismatch is to change the optimum phase-matching parameters. Our calculations show that, with the revised parameters, an enhancement in peak power approaching 50% could be achieved.