Generation of high-energy clean multicolored ultrashort pulses and their application in single-shot temporal contrast measurement

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel method to generate high-energy, multicolored ultrashort pulses using cascaded four-wave mixing in glass, enabling improved single-shot temporal contrast measurement with high dynamic range and resolution.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate for the first time a single-shot temporal contrast measurement with both high dynamic range and temporal resolution comparable to commercial systems.

Findings

Achieved 100-μJ-level multicolored femtosecond pulses.

Implemented a single-shot cross-correlator with 10^10 dynamic range.

Demonstrated 160 fs temporal resolution and 50 ps temporal window.

Abstract

We demonstrate the generation of 100-{\mu}J-level multicolored femtosecond pulses based on a single-stage cascaded four-wave mixing (CFWM) process in a thin glass plate. The generated high-energy CFWM signals can shift the central wavelength and have well-enhanced temporal contrast because of the third-order nonlinear process. They are innovatively used as clean sampling pulses of a cross-correlator for single-shot temporal contrast measurement. With a simple home-made setup, the proof-of-principle experimental results demonstrate the single-shot cross-correlator with dynamic range of 1010, temporal resolution of about 160 fs and temporal window of 50 ps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration in which both the dynamic range and the temporal resolution of a single-shot temporal contrast measurement are comparable to those of a commercial delay-scanning cross-correlator.