High energy 1.53-cycle pulses via homogeneous post-compression in a single thin-plate

TL;DR

Researchers generated high-energy, ultra-short laser pulses using a single thin fused silica plate, achieving excellent spatial and spectral quality.

Contribution

A novel method for generating high-energy few-cycle laser pulses using homogeneous post-compression in a single thin plate is demonstrated.

Findings

A 3.8 fs pulse duration was achieved with 64% relative peak power.

Spatial-spectral homogeneity of 97.1% was obtained using a single fused silica plate.

A Strehl ratio of 0.88 was maintained with deformable mirror wavefront correction.

Abstract

This study presents the investigation of the previously scarcely explored high energy few-cycle post-compression regime. Experimental shortening of the 5 mJ, 830 nm and 7.7 fs pulse with a flat-top spatial profile was achieved by nonlinear spectral broadening in a single 1 mm thick fused silica plate. The results show \documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\mathrm {3.8^{+0.20}_{-0.11}\,fs}$$\end{document} pulse duration with a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$\mathrm {64^{+2}_{-5}}\,\%$$\end{document} relative peak power. The achieved spatial-spectral homogeneity was \documentclass[12pt]{minimal}
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\begin{document}$$97.1\,\%$$\end{document}. By employing the deformable mirror wavefront correction the Strehl ratio of 0.88 was shown even in the presence of a strong nonlinear interaction. It was demonstrated that a simple numerical model can predict output spectral properties well. The presented research might enable the future generation of high energy and quality single-cycle super-octave pulses.

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