CEP-stable soliton-based pulse compression to 4.4 fs and UV generation at 800 kHz repetition rate

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates CEP-stable soliton-based pulse compression to 4.4 fs and UV generation at 800 kHz, enabling high-power ultrafast pulses for applications in spectroscopy and strong-field physics.

Contribution

It introduces a method for CEP-stable self-compression of OPCPA pulses in a gas-filled fiber, achieving sub-5 fs pulses and UV supercontinuum at high repetition rate.

Findings

Generated 4.4 fs pulses with 0.8 W average power

Extended supercontinuum from UV to near-infrared

Achieved CEP stability via f-to-2f interferometry

Abstract

We report generation of a femtosecond supercontinuum extending from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared and detection of its carrier-envelope phase variation by f-to-2f interferometry. The spectrum is generated in a gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber where soliton dynamics allows CEP-stable self-compression of OPCPA pump pulses at 800 nm to a duration of 1.7 optical cycles, followed by dispersive wave emission. The source provides up to 1 {\mu}J of pulse energy at 800 kHz repetition rate resulting in 0.8 W of average power, and can be extremely useful for example in strong-field physics, pump-probe measurements and ultraviolet frequency comb metrology.