Open AccessDispersion control for temporal contrast optimization
Author(s) -
Jeryl Tan,
Nicolas Forget,
Antonin Borot,
D. Kaplan,
P. Tournois,
Alexander Muschet,
László Veisz
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.26.025003
Subject(s) - optics , grism , dispersion (optics) , contrast (vision) , parametric statistics , pulse shaping , filter (signal processing) , pulse compression , transmission (telecommunications) , optical amplifier , self phase modulation , materials science , physics , computer science , nonlinear optics , laser , telecommunications , stars , statistics , radar , mathematics , astronomy , computer vision , hubble space telescope
We investigate the temporal contrast of the Light Wave Synthesizer 20 (LWS-20): a powerful, few-cycle source based on the optical parametric synthesizer principle. Saturation effects in the RF amplifier driving the acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) were found to degrade the coherent contrast for non-monotonic group delay corrections. We subsequently present a new dispersion scheme and design a novel transmission grism-based stretcher optimized for LWS-20. The resulting temporal contrast of the amplified, compressed output pulses is improved by 2-4 orders of magnitude compared to the former design.