High-performance ultrafast pulse compression in the visible spectral range for extreme nonlinear optics at kHz-MHz repetition rates

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly efficient single-stage pulse compression method for visible ultrafast pulses, achieving significant shortening, high spectral broadening, and excellent beam quality at high repetition rates, enabling advanced nonlinear optics applications.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel multi-plate compression scheme using low nonlinearity media for the first time in visible ultrafast pulse compression, achieving superior pulse quality and efficiency.

Findings

Over fourfold pulse compression from 180 fs to 40 fs

Spectral broadening efficiency exceeds 95%

Beam quality with 97% energy in main lobe

Abstract

We demonstrate a remarkably effective single-stage compression technique for ultrafast pulses in the visible electromagnetic spectrum using second-harmonic pulses at 515 nmderived from a 1030 nm Yb-based femtosecond regenerative amplifier. By employing an advanced multi-plate scheme, we achieve more than fourfold compression from 180 fs to 40 fs with an extremely high spectral broadening efficiency of over 95%, and a temporal compression efficiency exceeding 75%. In addition, our method leverages a low nonlinearity medium to attain the shortest pulse durations for a single compressor while maintaining a superb spatial beam quality with 97% of the energy confined in the main lobe of the Arie disk. Moreover, our technique enhances the temporal pulse quality at 515 nm without generating substantial femtosecond-to-picosecond pulse pedestals. The resulting intense visible laser pulses with excellent spatio-temporal parameters and high repetition rate of 100 kHz to 1 MHz open up new frontiers for extreme nonlinear optics and ultrabright EUV and X-ray high-harmonic generation using short VIS wavelength.