Optical modification of nonlinear crystals for quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification(QPCPA),which features a theoretical peak power much higher than those obtained with Ti:sapphire laser or optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification,is promising for future ultra-intense lasers.The doped rare-earth ion used for idler dissipation is critical for effective QPCPA,but is usually not compatible with traditional crystals.Thus far,only one dissipative crystal of Sm^(3+)-doped yttrium calcium oxyborate has been grown and applied.Here we introduce optical means to modify traditional crystals for QPCPA applications.We theoretically demonstrate two dissipation schemes by idler frequency doubling and sum-frequency generation with an additional laser.In contrast to absorption dissipation,the proposed nonlinear dissipations ensure not only high signal efficiency but also high small-signal gain.The demonstrated ability to optically modify crystals will facilitate the wide application of QPCPA.

Parametric generation and phase locking of multiple sidebands in the regime of full-back-conversion

Parametric interaction allows both forward and backward energy transfers among the three interacting waves.The back-conversion effect is usually detrimental when unidirectional energy transfer is desired.In this theoretical work,we manifest that the back-conversion effect underpins the direct generation of the picosecond pulse train without the need for a laser resonator.The research scenario is an optical parametric amplification(OPA)that consists of a second-order nonlinear medium,a quasi-continuous pump laser and a sinusoidal amplitude-modulated seed signal.The back-conversion of OPA can transfer the modulation peaks(valleys)of the incident signal into output valleys(peaks),which inherently induces spectral sidebands.The generation of each sideband is naturally accompanied with a phase shift of±π.In the regime of full-back-conversion,the amount and amplitude of the sidebands reach the maximum simultaneously,and their phase constitutes an arithmetic sequence,leading to the production of a picosecond pulse train.The generated picosecond pulse train can have an ultrahigh repetition rate of 40 GHz or higher,which may facilitate ultrafast applications with ultrahigh speed.

Spatiotemporally mode-locked soliton fiber laser at 2.8µm

Spatiotemporal mode-locking creates great opportunity for pulse energy scaling and nonlinear optics research in fiber.Until now,spatiotemporal mode-locking has only been realized in normal-dispersion dissipative soliton and similariton fiber lasers.In this paper,we demonstrated the first experimental realization of a spatiotemporally mode-locked soliton laser in mid-infrared fluoride fiber with anomalous dispersion.The mode-locked fluoride fiber oscillator directly generated a record pulse energy of 16.1 nJ and peak power of 74.6 kW at 2.8µm wavelength.This work extends the spatiotemporal mode-locking to soliton fiber lasers and should have a wide interest for the laser community.

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

In the 2015 review paper‘Petawatt Class Lasers Worldwide’a comprehensive overview of the current status of highpower facilities of>200 TW was presented.This was largely based on facility specifications,with some description of their uses,for instance in fundamental ultra-high-intensity interactions,secondary source generation,and inertial confinement fusion(ICF).With the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Professors Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou for the development of the technique of chirped pulse amplification(CPA),which made these lasers possible,we celebrate by providing a comprehensive update of the current status of ultra-high-power lasers and demonstrate how the technology has developed.We are now in the era of multi-petawatt facilities coming online,with 100 PW lasers being proposed and even under construction.In addition to this there is a pull towards development of industrial and multi-disciplinary applications,which demands much higher repetition rates,delivering high-average powers with higher efficiencies and the use of alternative wavelengths:mid-IR facilities.So apart from a comprehensive update of the current global status,we want to look at what technologies are to be deployed to get to these new regimes,and some of the critical issues facing their development.

Mode-locked 2.8-μm fluoride fiber laser:from soliton to breathing pulse

The mode-locked fluoride fiber laser(MLFFL)is an exciting platform for directly generating ultrashort pulses in the mid-infrared(mid-IR).However,owing to difficulty in managing the dispersion in fluoride fiber lasers,MLFFLs are restricted to the soliton regime,hindering pulse-energy scaling.We overcame the problem of dispersion management by utilizing the huge normal dispersion generated near the absorption edge of an infrared-bandgap semiconductor and promoted MLFFL from soliton to breathing-pulse mode-locking.In the breathing-pulse regime,the accumulated nonlinear phase shift can be significantly reduced in the cavity,and the pulse-energy-limitation effect is mitigated.The breathing-pulse MLFFL directly produced a pulse energy of 9.3 nJ and pulse duration of 215 fs,with a record peak power of 43.3 kW at 2.8μm.Our work paves the way for the pulse-energy and peak-power scaling of mid-IR fluoride fiber lasers,enabling a wide range of applications.

2.8 μm all-fiber Q-switched and mode-locked lasers with black phosphorus

In past years, rare-earth-doped fluoride fiber lasers(FFLs) have developed rapidly in the mid-infrared(mid-IR)region. However, due to the lack of fiber optic devices and challenge of fluoride fiber splicing, most mid-IR FFLs have been demonstrated with free-space optic elements, limiting the advantages of all-fiber lasers for flexible delivery, stability, and compactness. Here, we report, to the best of our knowledge, the first pulsed all-fiber FFL in the mid-IR region. By taking advantage of the integration of black phosphorus flake, stable Q-switched and mode-locked pulses were obtained at 2.8 μm wavelength. We believe that this all-fiber design will promote the application of pulsed FFL in the mid-IR region.

Multichannel high extinction ratio polarized beam splitters based on metasurfaces

Separating lights into different, paths according to the polarization states while keeping their respective path's polarizations with high purification is keen for polarization multiplex in optical communications. Metallic nanowire gratings with multi-slits in a period are proposed to achieve polarized beam splitters (PBSs) in reflection and diffraction. The setting of multi-slits largely reduces the reflection of photons with a transverse magnetific field via the plasmonic waveguiding effect, which leads to highly polarized output lights with extinction ratio larger than 20 dB in each channel. The proposed reflection/diffraction PBSs enrich the approaches to control the polarization states with the advantages of wide incident angles and flexible beam splitting angles.

Temporal-filtering dissipative soliton in an optical parametric oscillator

Dissipative solitons have been realized in mode-locked fiber lasers in the theoretical framework of the Ginzburg±Landau equation and have significantly improved the pulse energy and peak power levels of such lasers.It is interesting to explore whether dissipative solitons exist in optical parametric oscillators in the framework of three-wave coupling equations in order to substantially increase the performance of optical parametric oscillators.Here,we demonstrate a temporalfiltering dissipative soliton in a synchronously pumped optical parametric oscillator.The temporal-gain filtering of the pump pulse combined with strong cascading nonlinearity and dispersion in the optical parametric oscillator enables the generation of a broad spectrum with a nearly linear chirp;consequently,a significantly compressed pulse and high peak power can be realized after dechirping outside the cavity.Furthermore,we realized,for the first time,dissipative solitons in an optical system with a negative nonlinear phase shift and anomalous dispersion,extending the parameter region of dissipative solitons.The findings may open a new research block for dissipative solitons and provide new opportunities for mid-infrared ultrafast science.

Toward 5.2μm terawatt few-cycle pulses via optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification with oxide La3Ga5.5Nb0.5O14crystals

High-power femtosecond lasers beyond 5μm are attractive for strong-field physics with mid-infrared(IR)fields but are difficult to scale up.In optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification(OPCPA)at mid-IR wavelengths,a nonlinear crystal is vital,and its transmittance,dispersion,nonlinear coefficient and size determine the achievable power and wavelength.OPCPA beyond 5μm routinely relies on semiconductor crystals because common oxide crystals are not transparent in this spectral range.However,the small size and low damage threshold of semiconductor crystals fundamentally limit the peak power to gigawatts.In this paper,we design a terawatt-class OPCPA system at 5.2μm based on a new kind of oxide crystal of La3Ga5.5Nb0.5O14(LGN).The extended transparent range,high damage threshold,superior phase-matching characteristics and large size of LGN enable the generation of 0.13 TW seven-cycle pulses at5.2μm.This design fully relies on the state-of-the-art OPCPA technology of an octave-spanning ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser and a thin-disk Yb:YAG laser,offering the performance characteristics of high power,a high repetition rate and a stable carrier-envelope phase.

Demonstration of 85%pump depletion and 10-6 noise content in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Full pump depletion corresponds to the upper limit of the generated signal photons relative to the pump pulse;this allows the highest peak power to be produced in a unit area of ultraintense laser amplifiers.In practical systems based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification,however,the typical pump depletion is only~35%.Here,we report quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification(QPCPA)with a specially designed 8-cm-thick Sm∶YCOB crystal that highly dissipates the idler and hence improves pump depletion.We demonstrate 56%QPCPA energy efficiency for an 810-nm signal converted from a 532-nm pump,or equivalently 85%pump depletion.As another advantage,such a record high depletion greatly suppresses the parametric superfluorescence noise in QPCPA to only~1.5×10-6 relative to the amplified signal energy.These results pave the way to beyond the ten-petawatt peak power of the currently most intense lasers.

Single-shot cross-correlator for pulse-contrast characterization of high peak-power lasers

Pulse contrast is a crucial parameter of high peak-power lasers since the prepulse noise may disturb laser–plasma interactions. Contrast measurement is thus a prerequisite to tackle the contrast challenge in high peak-power lasers.This paper presents the progress review of single-shot cross-correlator(SSCC) for real-time contrast characterization.We begin with the key technologies that enable an SSCC to simultaneously possess high dynamic range(1010), large temporal window(50–70 ps) and high fidelity. We also summarize the instrumentation of SSCC prototypes and their applications on five sets of petawatt laser facilities in China. Finally, we discuss how to extend contrast measurements from time domain to spatiotemporal domain. Real-time and high-dynamic-range contrast measurements, provided by SSCC, can not only characterize various complex noises in high peak-power lasers but also guide the system optimization.

Pump phase transfer and its control in hybrid seeded optical parametric amplifiers

Due to the existence of spatial walk-off and/or group-velocity mismatch effects, pump-to-signal phase transfer becomes inevitable during parametric amplification. We experimentally demonstrate that in hybrid seeded optical parametric amplifiers(OPAs) that include two OPA stages seeded by the signal and idler waves, respectively, the phase of the output signal can be restored to its initial value, although there are spatial and temporal phase fluctuations on the pump source. This method significantly relaxes the requirement for high pump beam quality, which is always very stringent in parametric amplification systems. With the introduction of this scheme into birefringent phase-matching OPAs or chirped-pulse OPAs, it should be promising to achieve intense femtosecond laser pulses that are close to the diffraction limit in space and ultra-high contrast in time, simultaneously.

Analysis and evaluation of idler absorption for quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification(QPCPA) can improve the signal amplification efficiency and stability by inhibiting the back-conversion, in which the idler absorption plays a critical role. This Letter theoretically studies the impacts of idler absorption on the QPCPA performance in both the small-signal and saturation regimes. We demonstrate that there exists an optimal idler absorption that enables the achievement of maximum pump depletion within a minimum crystal length. To overcome the reduction in small-signal gain induced by idler absorption, the configuration of gradient idler absorption is proposed and demonstrated as a superior alternative to constant idler absorption. The results provide guidelines to the design of state-of-the-art QPCPA lasers.

Numerical study of spatial chirp distortion in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification

Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification is inevitably subject to high-order spatial chirp,particularly under the condition of saturated amplification and a Gaussian pump;this corresponds to an irreversible spatiotemporal distortion and consequently degrades the maximum attainable focused intensity.In this paper,we reveal that such spatial chirp distortion can be significantly mitigated in quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification(QPCPA)with idler absorption.Simulation results show that the quality of focused intensity in saturated QPCPA is nearly ideal,with a spatiotemporal Strehl ratio higher than 0.98.As the seed bandwidth increases,the idler absorption spectrum may not be uniform,but the Strehl ratio in QPCPA can be still high enough due to stronger idler absorption.

Large temporal window and high-resolution single-shot cross-correlator with two separate measurement channels

In strong-field physics experiments with ultraintense lasers,a single-shot cross-correlator(SSCC)is essential for fast optimization of the pulse contrast and meaningful comparison with theory for each pulse shot.To simultaneously characterize an ultrashort pulse and its long pedestal,the SSCC device must have both a high resolution and a large temporal window.However,the resolution and window in all kinds of single-shot measurement contradict each other in principle.Here we propose and demonstrate a novel SSCC device with two separate measurement channels:channel-1 for the large-window pedestal measurement has a moderate resolution but a large window,while channel-2 for the ultrashort pulse measurement has a small window but a high resolution;this allows the accurate characterization of the pulse contrast in a single shot.A two-channel SSCC device with a 200-fs resolution and 114-ps window has been developed and tested for its application in ultraintense lasers at 800 nm.