Open AccessKagome-fiber-based pulse compression of mid-infrared picosecond pulses from a Ho:YLF amplifier
Author(s) -
Krishna Murari,
G. Stein,
Hüseyin Çankaya,
Benoît Debord,
F. Gérôme,
Giovanni Cirmi,
Oliver D. Mücke,
P. Li,
Axel Ruehl,
Ingmar Hartl,
Kyung-Han Hong,
Fetah Benabid,
Franz X. Kärtner
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
optica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.074
H-Index - 107
ISSN - 2334-2536
DOI - 10.1364/optica.3.000816
Subject(s) - optics , ultrashort pulse , picosecond , materials science , laser , supercontinuum , pulse compression , fiber laser , photonic crystal fiber , chirped pulse amplification , amplifier , prism compressor , pulse duration , optoelectronics , wavelength , femtosecond pulse shaping , physics , telecommunications , radar , cmos , computer science
Over the last decade, the development of ultrafast laser pulses in the mid-infrared (MIR) region has led to important breakthroughs in attosecond science and strong-field physics. However, as most such broadband MIR laser sources are near-IR pumped, the generation of high-intensity, long-wavelength MIR pulses is still a challenge, especially starting from picosecond pulses. Here we report, both experimentally and numerically, nonlinear pulse compression of sub-millijoule picosecond pulses down to sub-300 fs at 2050 nm wavelength in gas-filled Kagome-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibers for driving MIR optical parametric amplifiers. The pump laser is comprised of a compact fiber laser-seeded 2 μm chirped pulse amplification system based on a Ho:YLF crystal at 1 kHz repetition rate. Spectral broadening is studied for different experimental conditions with variations of gas pressure and incident pulse energies. The spectrally broadened 1.8 ps pulses with a Fourier-limited duration of 250 fs are compressed using an external prism-based compressor down to 285 fs and output energy of 125 μJ