High-energy pulse self-compression and ultraviolet generation through soliton dynamics in hollow capillary fibres

Travers, John C.; Grigorova, Teodora F.; Brahms, Christian; Belli, Federico

doi:10.1038/s41566-019-0416-4

Cited by 245 publications

(191 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…where I0 is the peak intensity of the incident pump pulse [5]. This intensity is limited by the need to avoid self-focusing and excessive ionisation [5]. The most effective way of reducing the required HCF length is therefore the use of smaller core diameters.…”

Section: July 5 2019mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Optical soliton dynamics, obtained by balancing linear and nonlinear contributions to the phase of a propagating light pulse, are a key phenomenon in nonlinear fibre optics. Resonant dispersive wave (RDW) emission in gas-filled hollow fibres is a particularly promising application of this effect, enabling the generation of tuneable ultrashort pulses and supercontinua at shorter wavelengths than possible in any solid-core waveguide [1,2,3,4,5], from the vacuum ultraviolet to the visible spectral region. These dynamics were pioneered in hollow-core photonic-crystal fibres (HC-PCF).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These dynamics were pioneered in hollow-core photonic-crystal fibres (HC-PCF). Recently, we demonstrated that they can be scaled in energy by up to several orders of magnitude in simple hollow capillary fibres (HCF) [5]. Pumping gas-filled large-core HCF with 10 fs pulses enabled soliton self-compression to 1 fs in the near infrared-an optical attosecond pulse-and the generation of few-femtosecond vacuum and deep ultraviolet (VUV/DUV) pulses at unprecedented peak power, comparable to free-electron lasers.…”

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confidence: 99%

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High-energy ultraviolet dispersive-wave emission in compact hollow capillary systems

et al. 2019

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We demonstrate high-energy resonant dispersivewave emission in the deep ultraviolet (218 to 375 nm) from optical solitons in short (15 to 34 cm) hollow capillary fibres. This down-scaling in length compared to previous results in capillaries is achieved by using small core diameters (100 and 150 µm) and pumping with 6.3 fs pulses at 800 nm. We generate pulses with energies of 4 to 6 µJ across the deep ultraviolet in a 100 µm capillary and up to 11 µJ in a 150 µm capillary. From comparisons to simulations we estimate the ultraviolet pulse to be 2 to 2.5 fs in duration. We also numerically study the influence of pump duration on the bandwidth of the dispersive wave. Optical soliton dynamics, obtained by balancing linear and nonlinear contributions to the phase of a propagating light pulse, are a key phenomenon in nonlinear fibre optics. Resonant dispersive wave (RDW) emission in gas-filled hollow fibres is a particularly promising application of this effect, enabling the generation of tuneable ultrashort pulses and supercontinua at shorter wavelengths than possible in any solid-core waveguide [1,2,3,4,5], from the vacuum ultraviolet to the visible spectral region. These dynamics were pioneered in hollow-core photonic-crystal fibres (HC-PCF). Recently, we demonstrated that they can be scaled in energy by up to several orders of magnitude in simple hollow capillary fibres (HCF) [5]. Pumping gas-filled large-core HCF with 10 fs pulses enabled soliton self-compression to 1 fs in the near infrared-an optical attosecond pulse-and the generation of few-femtosecond vacuum and deep ultraviolet (VUV/DUV) pulses at unprecedented peak power, comparable to free-electron lasers. We also showed that up-scaling of those dynamics to the terrawatt scale is feasible by further increasing the HCF core size. Here, we down-scale the core size instead to achieve a more compact and practical setup. Whereas our first demonstration made use of 3 m HCF, here we show that this can be reduced to just 15 to 34 cm when using small-core HCF and even shorter pump pulses-6.3 fs, as readily generated in widely used conventional HCF pulse compression systems. The required pulse energy is also reduced, which is an additional advantage if multiple frequency conversion schemes are to be driven simultaneously, as for instance in multi-colour time-resolved spectroscopy experiments.The HCF length required to generate a dispersive wave is primarily determined by the distance over which soliton selfcompression occurs. This is well approximated by the fission length L f ,where N is the soliton order and L d and L nl are the dispersion and nonlinear lengths, describing the length scales of groupvelocity dispersion (GVD) and self-phase modulation (SPM), respectively [6]. Broadly similar soliton dynamics and RDW emission can be obtained with different parameters, provided that the soliton order and the zero-dispersion wavelength λ zd remain the same. In particular, the spectral location of RDW emission is chiefly determined by the pump wavelength λ0 and λ zd . W...

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Section: July 5 2019mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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High-energy ultraviolet dispersive-wave emission in compact hollow capillary systems

et al. 2019

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“…Alternatively, the input energy or the fiber length could be increased to obtain even shorter pulses. Although compression to 1.2 fs has been conclusively predicted in hollow capillary fiber (which performs in a very similar manner to hollow-core PCF) by numerical backpropagation to the fiber output [38], the broader spectrum would exceed the bandwidth of our chirped mirrors and FROG device, preventing direct measurement of the compressed pulses. As can be seen from Figs.…”

Section: Single-cycle Pulse Compressionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Efficient single-cycle pulse compression of an ytterbium fiber laser at 10 MHz repetition rate

et al. 2020

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Over the past years, ultrafast lasers with average powers in the 100 W range have become a mature technology, with a multitude of applications in science and technology. Nonlinear temporal compression of these lasers to few-or even single-cycle duration is often essential, yet still hard to achieve, in particular at high repetition rates. Here we report a two-stage system for compressing pulses from a 1030 nm ytterbium fiber laser to single-cycle durations with 5 μJ output pulse energy at 9.6 MHz repetition rate. In the first stage, the laser pulses are compressed from 340 to 25 fs by spectral broadening in a krypton-filled single-ring photonic crystal fiber (SR-PCF), subsequent phase compensation being achieved with chirped mirrors. In the second stage, the pulses are further compressed to singlecycle duration by soliton-effect self-compression in a neon-filled SR-PCF. We estimate a pulse duration of ~3.4 fs at the fiber output by numerically back-propagating the measured pulses. Finally, we directly measured a pulse duration of 3.8 fs (1.25 optical cycles) after compensating (using chirped mirrors) the dispersion introduced by the optical elements after the fiber, more than 50% of the total pulse energy being in the main peak. The system can produce compressed pulses with peak powers >0.6 GW and a total transmission exceeding 70%.

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“…DW emission has been widely exploited in both solid and hollow-core fibers for efficient and tunable frequency up-and down-conversion [25]. In HC fibers tunability from the visible down to the vacuum UV has been demonstrated at pump laser repetition rates from 1 kHz to 10 MHz [10,[26][27][28], with conversion efficiencies up to 15% [26].…”

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Carrier-envelope-phase-stable soliton-based pulse compression to 44 fs and ultraviolet generation at the 800 kHz repetition rate

et al. 2019

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We report generation of a femtosecond supercontinuum extending from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared and detection of its carrier-envelope phase variation by f-to-2f interferometry. The spectrum is generated in a gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber where soliton dynamics allows CEP-stable self-compression of OPCPA pump pulses at 800 nm to a duration of 1.7 optical cycles, followed by dispersive wave emission. The source provides up to 1 μJ of pulse energy at 800 kHz repetition rate resulting in 0.8 W of average power, and can be extremely useful for example in strong-field physics, pump-probe measurements and ultraviolet frequency comb metrology.

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High-energy pulse self-compression and ultraviolet generation through soliton dynamics in hollow capillary fibres

Cited by 245 publications

References 79 publications

High-energy ultraviolet dispersive-wave emission in compact hollow capillary systems

High-energy ultraviolet dispersive-wave emission in compact hollow capillary systems

Efficient single-cycle pulse compression of an ytterbium fiber laser at 10 MHz repetition rate

Carrier-envelope-phase-stable soliton-based pulse compression to 44 fs and ultraviolet generation at the 800 kHz repetition rate

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