Meizhi Sun

Design of ultrabroadband internal reflection gratings with high efficiency

A high-efficiency, ultrabroadband dielectric internal reflection grating with rhombus-shaped grooves is designed by a rigorous coupled-wave analysis, and an effective method for predicting spectral bandwidths of gratings from their efficiency maps is presented. The grating can be fabricated from a single dielectric material, and its reflection diffraction efficiency of the -1st order can reach more than 0.99. More importantly, an ultrabroadband top-hat diffraction spectrum with efficiency exceeding 0.98 over 170 nm wavelength wide is achieved, which makes the gratings suitable for applications associated with broadband illumination, such as ultrashort pulses.

Compensation method for temperature-induced phase mismatch during frequency conversion in high-power laser systems

A compensation method for phase mismatch caused by temperature variation during the frequency conversion process is proposed and the theoretical model is established. The method is based on the principle that phase mismatch can be compensated via the electro-optic effect based on a compensation scheme consisting of two nonlinear crystals and an electro-optic crystal; further, a new dimension adjustment can be achieved by changing the voltage. In a proof-of-principle study, frequency conversion from 1053 nm to 526.5 nm and 351 nm by cascade KH2PO4 (KDP) and KD2PO4 (DKDP) crystals, respectively, is presented as an example. Three-dimensional numerical simulations are conducted to show that the conversion efficiency of frequency doubling and tripling varies with temperature. The results show that the temperature acceptance bandwidth of doubling and tripling can be 2.4 and 3.4 times larger, respectively, than that of the traditional method using a single crystal. We also analyze the stability of the conversion efficiency for 192 beams by our proposed method when the temperature is randomly varied within the range of 24°C–26°C. The standard deviation of the conversion efficiency of frequency doubling and tripling decreases from 1.25% and 6.61% to 0.18% and 0.56%, respectively. In addition, the influence of the reflection loss on the output efficiencies is also analyzed and the results show that it is very small. This indicates that this method may be effective in reducing the temperature sensitivity of conversion efficiency.

Numerical simulations of the impact of wavefront phase distortions of pump on the beam quality of OPA

A numerical model of optical parametric amplification (OPA) is introduced to investigate the impact of wavefront phase distortion of pump on the beam quality of signal. Numerical results show that the unidentical walk-off directions of the pump and the idler waves are the main factors leading to the transfer of wavefront phase distortions of the pump to the signal, and by reducing the angle between the two directions, the beam quality factor (M2) can be greatly decreased and hence the good beam quality of the signal can be maintained.

Analysis of ultra-broadband high-energy optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on YCOB crystal

A new type of optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier is designed and analyzed for the amplification of pulse centered at 808 nm. A novel crystal, yttrium calcium oxyborate YCa4O(BO3)3 (YCOB), is utilized in the power amplification stage of optical parametric amplification (OPA). Noncollinear phase matching parameters in the xoz principle plane of YCOB, compared with those in BBO and DKDP, are analyzed by numerical simulation. The results show that YCOB rather than DKDP can be used in the power amplification stage of OPA to realize the amplification of chirped pulse to several joules with a gain bandwidth exceeding 100 nm. This can be used to gain a high intensity pulse of ~10 fs after the compressor.

Analysis of 808nm centered optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on DKDP crystals

The non-collinear phase-matching in Potassium Dideuterium Phosphate (DKDP) crystal is analyzed in detail with signal pulse of center wavelength at 808 nm and pump pulse of wavelength at 526.5 nm. By numerical analysis, parametric bandwidths for various DKDP crystals of different deuteration level are presented. In particularly for DKDP crystals of 95% deuteration level, the optimal non-collinear angles, phase-matching angles, parametric bandwidths, walk-off angles, acceptance angles, efficiency coefficients, gain and gain bandwidths are provided based on the parameter concepts. Optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on DKDP crystal is designed and the output characteristics are simulated by OPA coupled wave equations for further discuss. It is concluded that DKDP crystals higher than 90% deuteration level can be utilized in ultra-short high power laser systems with compressed pulses broader than 30fs. The disadvantage is that the acceptance angles are small, increasing the difficulty of engineering regulation.

A Novel Femtosecond Laser System for Attosecond Pulse Generation

We report a novel ultrabroadband high-energy femtosecond laser to be built in our laboratory. A 7-femtosecond pulse is firstly stretched by an eight-pass offner stretcher with a chirp rate 15 ps/nm, and then energy-amplified by a two-stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA). The first stage as preamplification with three pieces of BBO crystals provides the majority of the energy gain. At the second stage, a YCOB crystal with the aperture of ~50 mm is used instead of the KDP crystal as the gain medium to ensure the shortest pulse. After the completion, the laser will deliver about 8 J with pulse duration of about 10 femtoseconds, which should be beneficial to the attosecond pulse generation and other ultrafast experiments.

Diffraction grating single-shot correlation system for measurement of picosecond laser pulses

We study and experimentally demonstrate a sensitive single-shot correlation system in which only a diffraction grating is used to produce a transverse time delay (TTD) in the reference pulse. The mechanism of the TTD introduced by the grating and the formation of the relative time delay (RTD) in the noncollinear correlation system are analyzed in detail. By using our system, we successfully measured the temporal duration of picosecond laser pulses, and a time resolution of ~0.047 ps is obtained at 1047 nm. The impact of the grating dispersion and the second harmonic beam walk-off effect on the measurement are considered.

Theoretical and experimental study of 808nm OPCPA amplifier by using a DKDP crystal

The SG II 5PW laser is designed as an open ultra-short high power laser facility that operates at the wavelength of 808nm. Three optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) stages are used to ensure the uncompressed pulse energy up to 260J. With a four pass zigzag compressor, the pulse width is compressed into less than 30fs and the pulse energy about 150J. By using BBO and LBO crystal, the first two OPCPA amplifiers have been accomplished this year. 35J@21fs outputs have been achieved. Since the largest size of the LBO crystal now is only about 100mm×100mm that is not enough for the needs of the third OPCPA amplifier. In our work, potassium deuterium phosphate (DKDP) as a candidate crystal has been studied theoretically and experimentally. Phase-matching parameters for various deuterium doped rate DKDP crystals are calculated. OPCPA amplifier based on 95% deuterium doped rate is designed and the output characteristics are simulated by OPA coupled wave equations. The results show that DKDP crystals with deuterium doped rate higher than 90% can be utilized in ultra-short high power laser systems that support the pulse width shorter than 30 femtoseconds. Still by estimation, when Quasi-phase-matching techniques and collinear design are used in small signal OPCPA amplification, the greatest efficiency can reach above 55%. By experiment it has proved that the output spectrum width can be more than 80nm.

Focusing and imaging properties of diffractive optical elements with star-ring topological structure

A kind of diffractive optical elements (DOE) with star-ring topological structure is proposed and their focusing and imaging properties are studied in detail. The so-called star-ring topological structure denotes that a large number of pinholes distributed in many specific zone orbits. In two dimensional plane, this structure can be constructed by two constrains, one is a mapping function, which yields total potential zone orbits, corresponding to the optical path difference (OPD); the other is a switching sequence based on the given encoded seed elements and recursion relation to operate the valid zone orbits. The focusing and imaging properties of DOE with star-ring topological structure are only determined by the aperiodic sequence, and not relevant to the concrete geometry structure. In this way, we can not only complete the traditional symmetrical DOE, such as circular Dammam grating, Fresnel zone plates, photon sieves, and their derivatives, but also construct asymmetrical elements with anisotropic diffraction pattern. Similarly, free-form surface or three dimensional DOE with star-ring topological structure can be constructed by the same method proposed. In consequence of smaller size, lighter weight, more flexible design, these elements may allow for some new applications in micro and nanphotonics.

Contrast measurement of ultra-short laser pulses

The contrast measurements of ultra-short laser pulses from a typical Ti:Sapphire oscillator have been performed using homemade second- and third-order correlator respectively. The two correlators were all demonstrated a dynamic range of 108.