We report on an ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber with a core diameter of 60 microm and mode-field-area of ~2000 microm(2) of the emitted fundamental mode. Together with the short absorption length of 0.5 m this fiber possesses a record low nonlinearity which makes this fiber predestinated for the amplification of short laser pulses to very high peak powers. In a first continuous-wave experiment a power of 320 W has been extracted corresponding to 550 W per meter. To our knowledge this represents the highest power per unit length ever reported for fiber lasers. Furthermore, the robust single-transverse-mode propagation in a passive 100 microm core fiber with a similar design reveals the potential of extended large-mode-area photonic crystal fibers.

We report on the experimental demonstration of a fiber chirped- pulse amplification system capable of generating nearly transform-limited sub 500 fs pulses with 2.2 mJ pulse energy at 11 W average power. The resulting record peak power of 3.8 GW could be achieved by combining active phase shaping with an efficient reduction of the acquired nonlinear phase. Therefore, we used an Ytterbium-doped large-pitch fiber with a mode field diameter of 105 µm as the main amplifier.

High harmonic generation (HHG) enables extreme-ultraviolet radiation with table-top set-ups(1). Its exceptional properties, such as coherence and (sub)-femtosecond pulse durations, have led to a diversity of applications(1). Some of these require a high photon flux and megahertz repetition rates, for example, to avoid space charge effects in photoelectron spectroscopy(2-4). To date, this has only been achieved with enhancement cavities(5). Here, we establish a novel route towards powerful HHG sources. By achieving phase-matched HHG of a megahertz fibre laser we generate a broad plateau (25 eV-40 eV) of strong harmonics, each containing more than 1 x 10(12) photons s(-1), which constitutes an increase by more than one order of magnitude in that wavelength range(6-8). The strongest harmonic (H25, 30 eV) has an average power of 143 mu W (3x10(13) photons s(-1)). This concept will greatly advance and facilitate applications in photoelectron or coincidence spectroscopy(9), coherent diffractive imaging(10) or (multidimensional) surface science(2)

We report on an OPCPA system delivering CEP-stable pulses with a pulse duration of only 1.7 optical cycles at 880 nm wavelength. This pulse duration is achieved by the generation, optical parametric amplification and compression of a full optical octave of bandwidth. The system is pumped by a high average power Yb-fiber laser system, which allows for operation of the OPCPA at up to 1 MHz repetition rate and 22 W of average output power. Further scaling towards single-cycle pulses, higher energy and output power is discussed.