High-Energy Multidimensional Solitary States in Hollow Core Optical Fibers (Phase 1)

根据市场研究未来，2021年全球超快激光器市场价值为17.5亿美元，预计到2028年将达到44.8亿美元，估计复合年增长率为17.8%（见提案参考[18]）。虽然超快激光器广泛应用于包括物理、化学、材料科学、生物和医学在内的学术研究中，但这种增长是由工业需求驱动的，其中超短脉冲用于汽车、医疗设备和消费电子等各种经济部门的制造业。这些激光器是精确、快速和经济的加工和加工材料的工具，并被用来取代传统的技术，如外科手术刀和机械锯。近年来，超快激光技术经历了一场革命：成熟但复杂的钛-蓝宝石（Ti-Sa）技术提供了20飞秒的最短脉冲，平均功率高达几十瓦，被“淘汰”了。新型工业级交钥匙镱（Yb）激光器能够以高度稳健和可靠的方式提供平均功率为千瓦的亚皮秒脉冲。所有主要的激光公司现在都在科学和工业应用的驱动下将Yb激光器商业化。尽管取得了这一成功，但一个普遍的批评和限制是，Yb激光器的脉冲持续时间与Ti-Sa相比太长，这是学术界和工业界许多应用的关键需求。在这种情况下，INRS的研究人员开发了一种新技术，能够以一种简单而稳健的方法将亚皮秒激光脉冲有效地压缩到10.8飞秒。该技术在空心光纤中使用了多维非线性传输，压缩比接近两个数量级，中空光纤中填充了广泛存在的拉曼活性分子（如氮）。在这个项目的背景下，INRS团队将用最先进的Yb激光系统演示这项技术。为了提高这项新技术的价值，他们将利用压缩激光脉冲驱动相干软x射线辐射，并将该技术扩展到可见光和中红外光谱范围。

According to Market Research Future, the global ultrafast lasers market was valued 1.75B USD in 2021, and is expected to reach 4.48 Billion in 2028 with an estimated compound annual growth rate of 17.8% (see reference [18] of proposal). While ultrafast lasers are widely applied in academic research covering physics, chemistry, materials science, biology and medicine, this growth is driven by industrial needs where ultrashort pulses are used for manufacturing in various economic sectors including automotive, medical devices, and consumer electronics. These lasers are accurate, fast and economic tools for machining and processing materials, and are adopted to replace conventional techniques such as surgical scalpels and mechanical saws. In recent years, ultrafast laser technologies have seen a revolution: The well-established, yet complex Titanium-Sapphire (Ti-Sa) technology, providing the shortest pulses down to 20 femtoseconds with up to few tens of Watts of average power, was "dethroned". New industrial-grade turnkey Ytterbium (Yb) lasers are capable of delivering sub-picosecond pulses with kW of average power - in a highly robust and reliable manner. All major laser companies are now commercializing Yb lasers driven by scientific and industrial applications. Despite this success, a common criticism and limitation is that the pulse duration of Yb lasers is too long compared to Ti-Sa - a critical need for many applications in academia and industry. In this context, the INRS researchers have developed a novel technology capable of efficiently compressing sub-picosecond laser pulses to 10.8 femtoseconds in a simple and robust approach. With a compression ratio of nearly two orders of magnitude, this technology uses multidimensional nonlinear propagation in hollow core optical fibers filled with widely available Raman-active molecules such as nitrogen. In the context of this project, the INRS team will demonstrate this technique with state-of-the-art Yb laser systems. To enhance the value of this novel technology, they will drive coherent soft X-ray radiation with the compressed laser pulses, and will scale the technology to the visible and the mid-infrared spectral range.