Open AccessPerformance improvement of a nonlinear temporal filter by using cascaded femtosecond optical parametric amplification
Author(s) -
Jiabing Hu,
X. L. Wang,
Xiaojun Yang,
Peile Bai,
Fenxiang Wu,
Zongxin Zhang,
Haidong Chen,
Xueliang Yang,
Jia Qian,
Jiayan Gui,
Yanyan Li,
Yanqi Liu,
Xiaoming Lu,
Yi Xu,
Yuxin Leng
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.440959
Subject(s) - femtosecond , optics , physics , laser , filter (signal processing) , parametric statistics , optical parametric amplifier , supercontinuum , energy conversion efficiency , wavelength , materials science , optical amplifier , optoelectronics , computer science , mathematics , statistics , computer vision , photonic crystal fiber
In this paper, we report that the conversion efficiency and spectrum of femtosecond optical parametric amplification (fs-OPA) can be significantly enhanced by employing a compact cascaded femtosecond OPA (CF-OPA) scheme with the self-compensation of the temporal walk-off between two nonlinear gain media. Correspondingly, the gain related temporal contrast can also be improved. The feasibility of the CF-OPA method using three cascaded BBO crystals is numerically and experimentally analyzed. Moreover, by replacing the conventional fs-OPA with the CF-OPA and optimizing the design, the performance of a nonlinear temporal filter combining cross-polarized wave generation and fs-OPA is comprehensively improved. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the CF-OPA scheme, which can generate high-performance cleaned pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate with energy of 340μJ, energy fluctuation below 0.9% (RMS), spectral width of 97 nm (FWHM), Fourier-transform-limited pulse width of 12 fs and temporal contrast better than 10 -12 . To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported temporal walk-off self-compensated quasi-collinear CF-OPA geometry adopting three cascaded BBO crystals, which can be easily generalized to other wavelengths or nonlinear crystals. The above nonlinear temporal filter with a CF-OPA scheme has the rarest comprehensive parameters, which can provide excellent seed pulses for PW and 10 PW class femtosecond laser systems.