The effect of nonlinear lensing on the coupling of ultrafast laser pulses to hollow-core waveguides

TL;DR

This study investigates how nonlinear lensing effects in gas-cell windows affect the coupling efficiency and pulse duration of ultrafast laser pulses into hollow-core fibres, providing guidelines for optimal system design.

Contribution

The paper introduces a numerical simulation analysis of nonlinear effects in gas-cell windows and derives a simple expression for optimal window placement to improve coupling.

Findings

Coupling efficiency decreases when the window is too close to the fibre entrance.

Longer wavelengths are more tolerant to high intensities in the window.

Shifting the focus can partially restore coupling efficiency but minimally improves pulse duration.

Abstract

Gas-filled hollow-core fibres are a flexible platform for the manipulation of ultrafast laser pulses through a variety of nonlinear optical effects. Efficient high-fidelity coupling of the initial pulses is very important for system performance. Here we study the effect of self-focusing in gas-cell windows on the coupling of ultrafast laser pulses into hollow-core fibres using (2+1)-dimensional numerical simulations. As expected, we find that the coupling efficiency is degraded and the duration of the coupled pulses changed when the entrance window is too close to the fibre entrance. The interplay of nonlinear spatio-temporal reshaping and the linear dispersion of the window create different results depending on the window material, pulse duration, and pulse wavelength, with longer-wavelength beams more tolerant of high intensity in the window. While shifting the nominal focus to compensate can restore some of the lost coupling efficiency, it improves the pulse duration only marginally. From our simulations we derive a simple expression for the minimum distance between the window and the HCF entrance facet. Our results have implications for the often space-constrained design of hollow-core-fibre systems, especially where the input energy is not constant.