Hollow core fiber compression scheme for high-average/peak-power ytterbium laser technology and its application to secondary sources of long-wavelength radiation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Photonics industry has been rapidly growing in the last decades also thanks to the remarkable advances achieved by laser technology. Nowadays, light sources delivering broadband, ultra-short (sub-picosecond) pulses are in high demand to explore next-generation optical technologies. The advent of mature ytterbium lasers brought this technology to an industrial level. Yet, extremely-short laser pulses on the order of few femtoseconds are not available directly from ytterbium lasers. Thus, a subsequent pulse compression step is required. This can be achieved by spectrally broadening the laser pulses in a hollow core fiber (HCF) filled with gas and compressing them to few optical cycle pulse duration with adequate optics. Our industrial partner few-cycle Inc., in collaboration with one of the PIs of this proposal, has developed a simple approach where the HCF is stretched between two optical mounts that is commercialized worldwide and has been installed in more than 10 foreign laboratories. few-cycle now wants to push the performance of its stretched HCF system, to explore yet unreached laser specifications for pulse compression of ytterbium sources, which nowadays represent the state-of-the-art in laser technology for industrial applications. In this three year project, we will investigate the compression of: (1) very low energy (down to 10µJ) femtosecond pulses delivered by high repetition rate ytterbium laser systems (100kHz to multi-MHz) and (2) very high energy (>50mJ) picosecond ytterbium pulses at 500Hz repetition rate. Furthermore, we will also exploit these compressed laser systems for generating ultrashort mid-infrared and THz pulses. To achieve these goals, two Master's students and a postdoctoral fellow will be recruited. These personnel will be supervised by the two PIs of the project (Drs. Luca Razzari and F. Légaré) and will closely interact with few-cycle. In addition, three members of the ALLS technical team will be involved in the investigation. The expected impact is to be found in the advanced knowledge regarding extreme pulse compression of high average/peak power lasers as well as in its implementation into marketable systems for ytterbium laser technology.