Carrier envelope phase stabilization with a true common-path collinear ƒ–2ƒ interferometer

Abstract

A variety of technologies have been so far demonstrated for the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) control of mode-locked oscillators. An instrumental part of these technologies is the configuration of interferometers and the application of feedback control. Of the devices, the collinear ƒ-2ƒ interferometer developed in this work is compact and robust against disturbance because the optical paths of the ƒ and 2 ƒ components are collinear within the interferometer. To compensate for the delay time between the ƒ and 2ƒ components, a birefringent time plate made of α-BBO is installed in the interferometer. We achieved an in-loop CEP stability of 27 mrad (rms) using conventional feedback control with an acousto-optic modulator to control the pump power. We believe that the collinear ƒ-2ƒ interferometer offers the best choice as an interferometer for CEP stabilization of the front-end oscillator in the chirped-pulse amplification system