Femtosecond resolution timing jitter correction on a TW scale Ti:sapphire laser system for FEL pump-probe experiments

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-precision, single-shot spectrally resolved cross-correlator for femtosecond timing jitter correction in TW-scale Ti:sapphire lasers, enabling high-resolution pump-probe experiments at free electron lasers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel sub-femtosecond resolution timing correction method with real-time feedback for large-scale Ti:sapphire laser systems used in FEL experiments.

Findings

Achieved ~3 fs RMS timing stability over hours.

Demonstrated sub-fs resolution in jitter measurement.

Showed applicability to various wavelengths and FEL integration.

Abstract

Intense ultrashort pulse lasers are used for fs resolution pumpprobe experiments more and more at large scale facilities, such as free electron lasers (FEL). Measurement of the arrival time of the laser pulses and stabilization to the machine or other sub-systems on the target, is crucial for high time-resolution measurements. In this work we report on a single shot, spectrally resolved, non-collinear cross-correlator with sub-fs resolution. With a feedback applied we keep the output of the TW class Ti:sapphire amplifier chain in time with the seed oscillator to ~3 fs RMS level for several hours. This is well below the typical pulse duration used at FELs and supports fs resolution pump-probe experiments. Short term jitter and long term timing drift measurements are presented. Applicability to other wavelengths and integration into the timing infrastructure of the FEL are also covered to show the full potential of the device.