Kotaro Okamura

Temporal contrast enhancement of femtosecond pulses by a self-diffraction process in a bulk Kerr medium

We demonstrated for the first time the application of a self-diffraction (SD) process in a bulk Kerr medium to improve the temporal, spectral, and spatial qualities of femtosecond laser pulses. A proof-of-principle experiment succeeded in improving the temporal contrast of a femtosecond pulse by four orders of magnitude even in the picosecond region using a 0.5-mm-thick fused silica glass plate by this technique. The energy conversion efficiency from the incident pulses to the two first-order SD signals is about 12%. By the SD process, a laser pulse with smoother spectral shape, higher beam quality, and shorter pulse duration than those of the input pulse was generated. This technique is expected to be used to design background-free petawatt laser system in the future.

Octave-spanning carrier-envelope phase stabilized visible pulse with sub-3-fs pulse duration

The visible second harmonic of the idler output from a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier was compressed using adaptive dispersion control with a deformable mirror. The amplifier was pumped by and seeded in the signal path by a common 400 nm second-harmonic pulse from a Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier. Thus, both the idler output and the second harmonic of the idler were passively carrier-envelope phase stabilized. The shortest pulse duration achieved was below 3 fs.

Clean sub-8-fs pulses at 400 nm generated by a hollow fiber compressor for ultraviolet ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy

Clean 7.5 fs pulses at 400 nm with less than 3% energy in tiny satellite pulses were obtained by spectral broadening in a hollow fiber and dispersive compensating using a prism pair together with a deformable mirror system. As an example, this stable and clean pulse was used to study the ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy of photoactive yellow protein. Moreover, the self-diffraction signal shows a smoothed and broadened laser spectrum and is expected to have a further clean laser pulse, which makes it more useful in the ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy in the future.

Applications of parametric processes to high-quality multicolour ultrashort pulses, pulse cleaning and CEP stable sub-3fs pulse

Our recent experimental results of three methods related to and useful for the generation of attosecond pulses are summarized. The pulses obtained by all of them have high qualities in terms of phase, temporal, spectral and spatial properties which are based on the physical principles associated with the parametric processes. First, carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stable sub-5 fs and sub-3 fs pulses by non-collinear optical parametric amplification (NOPA) in the near-infrared and visible spectral range will be described. The mechanism of the passive CEP stabilization is described. Passively stabilized idler and its second harmonic (SH) pulses from NOPAs are compressed to sub-5fs and sub-3fs, respectively. Compression of the idler output from a NOPA and its SH is attained with a specially designed characterization method during the compression. Second, generation of multicolour pulses by the cascaded four-wave mixing process in bulk media is discussed. As short as 15-fs multicoloured femtosecond pulses are obtained with two ∼40 fs pulses incident to a fused-silica glass plate by this method. These broadband multicolour sidebands are expected to provide single-cycle or sub-fs pulses after the Fourier synthesis. Third, a new technique based on self-diffraction in the Kerr medium is used to clean and shorten the femtosecond laser pulse. The cleaned pulse with high temporal contrast is expected to be used as a seed for a background-free petawatt laser system and then used as the laser source for high-energy attosecond pulse generation in a solid target. The mechanisms of CEP stabilization, pulse spectral smoothening and pulse contrast enhancement are comparatively discussed.

Ultra Slow Muon Microscope at MUSE / J-PARC

We report current constructing states of the Ultra Slow Muon Beam at U-line / MUSE / J-PARC, which are supported by thermal muonium (Mu, μ+e−) production with the most intense pulsed slow muon beam, laser resonant ionization, and transportation of Ultra Slow Muon Beam. A thermal Mu is produced by a hot tungsten foil in a Mu-production chamber. At the laser resonant ionization process, a thermal Mu is ionized by coherent vacuum ultraviolet radiation and coherent 355-nm radiation. The coherent radiation sources are developed at RIKEN, installed in a laser cabin, and connected via a VUV steering chamber with the Mu-production chamber.

Sub-10-fs deep-ultraviolet light source with stable power and spectrum.

In some applications of ultrafast spectroscopy that employ sub-10-fs pulses, the pulse spectrum and power need to be stable for several tens of minutes. In this study, we generate sub-10-fs deep-ultraviolet (DUV) pulses with such stabilities by chirped-pulse four-wave mixing. A power fluctuation of less than 3% rms was realized by employing stabilization schemes that employ a power stabilizer. The pulses generated in this study have been applied to transient absorption spectroscopy in the DUV with a sub-10-fs time resolution [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.14, 6200 (2012).10.1039/c2cp23649d]. This sub-10-fs DUV source has a similar performance to widely used noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers.

Output Energy Stabilization of Non-collinear Optical Parametric Amplifier

Active stabilization loops were implimented in a non-collinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) to reduce output pulse energy fluctuation. Proportional-integral-derivative feedback stabilizations of pump and seed energy reduced fluctuation of each controlled parameters more than 80% and resulted in more than 60% reduction of the final NOPA output energy fluctuation. This simple stabilization scheme is expected not to affect the capability of NOPA to generate ultrashort pulses, and hence this scheme can be applied to improve signal-to-noise ratio of the data obtained in experiments using NOPA.

Optimal crossed overlap of coherent vacuum ultraviolet radiation and thermal muonium emission for μSR with the Ultra Slow Muon

For μSR with ultra slow muon, we are constructing U line in materials and life science facility (MLF), J-PARC at present. Generation of ultra slow muon requires thermal muonium generation and laser resonant ionization process with vacuum ultraviolet radiation (1S→2P) and 355-nm radiation (2P→unbound). For laser resonant ionization, the coherent radiations and the thermal muonium emission must be coincident in time and space. The radiations can be steered in a chamber for reasonable overlap in space, and they can be easily overlapped in time because they are generated from one laser source. The trigger signal of the accelerator is useful for stable overlap in time.

Femtosecond pulses cleaning by transient-grating process in Kerr-optical media

We use a transient-grating (TG) process in a Kerr bulk medium to clean a femtosecond laser pulse. Using the technique, the temporal contrast of the generated TG signal is improved by more than two orders of magnitude in comparison with the incident pulse in a 0.5-mm-thick fused silica plate. The laser spectrum is smoothed and broadened, and the pulse duration is shortened simultaneously. We expect to extend this technique to a clean pulse with broadband spectral bandwidth at a wide spectral range because it is a phase-matched process.

Two-step frequency conversion for connecting distant quantum memories by transmission through an optical fiber

Long-distance quantum communication requires entanglement between distant quantum memories. For this purpose, photon transmission is necessary to connect the distant memories. Here, for the first time, we develop a two-step frequency conversion process (from a visible wavelength to a telecommunication wavelength and back) involving the use of independent two-frequency conversion media where the target quantum memories are nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamonds (with an emission/absorption wavelength of 637.2 nm), and experimentally characterize the performance of this process acting on light from an attenuated CW laser. A total conversion efficiency of approximately 7% is achieved. The noise generated in the frequency conversion processes is measured, and the signal-to-noise ratio is estimated for a single photon signal emitted by a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center. The developed frequency conversion system has future applications via transmission through a long optical fiber channel at a telecommunication wavelength for a quantum repeater network.