Optical Kerr switching technique for the production of a picosecond, multiwavelength CO_2 laser pulse

Abstract

A wavelength-independent method for optical gating, based on the optical Kerr effect, has been demonstrated. Using this method, we produced 100-ps, 10-kW, two-wavelength pulses (10.3 and 10.6 microm) with a signal-to-background ratio contrast of 10(5) by slicing a long CO2 pulse. The capability of gating consecutive pulses separated on a picosecond time scale with this method is also shown.

Supercontinuum generation from 2 to 20 μm in GaAs pumped by picosecond CO_2 laser pulses

“…Since the temporal measurements are performed using a streak camera, the 10 μm radiation is first converted to visible light by copropagating the output radiation with a red diode probe laser through a CS 2 Kerr cell [13]. Due to the fast (∼1 ps) response time of CS 2 , this interaction effectively transcribes the temporal information of the 10 μm pump to the visible probe.…”

Generation of high power, sub-picosecond, 10 µm pulses via self-phase modulation followed by compression

“…This strategy has been applied to generate, 20 GW (60 mJ, 3 ps) CO 2 laser pulses. Figure 3 is a streak camera measurement of the output of this system, upconverted to the visible range [12]. Similar to the simulated pulse train of Fig.…”

Prospects and directions of CO2 laser-driven accelerators

“…A 200 ns-long pulse from a gratingtunable, single-longitudinal mode TEA CO 2 laser is used for this purpose. In order to generate a picosecond seed pulse, the 10 µm output beam is modulated by an ultrafast 1 µm pulse from a Nd:glass CPA system in a Kerr nonlinear medium [13]. The Kerr modulator can be used in combination with a Ge semiconductor switch to increase the contrast of a sliced pulse.…”