Abstract

High-power and few-cycle mid-IR laser sources are of great interest for their application in strong-field physics and attosecond science [1,2]. We present an ultra-broadband optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification system (OPCPA) achieving 9.1 W of average power at a repetition-rate of 100 kHz, with an optical bandwidth centred at 2.2 µm and spanning 1000 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest demonstrated power for an ultra-broadband source operating around 2 µm. The complete setup is depicted in fig. 1(a). We start with a CEP-stabilized Ti:Sapphire oscillator (Laser Quantum) producing sufficiently broadband pulses to seed the OPCPA amplification chain as well as the pump amplification chain. A portion of the corresponding spectrum around 1030 nm is sent towards a high-power Yb:YAG amplifier (Amphos GmbH), which brings a 100 kHz pulse train to 300 W, with a pulse duration <3 ps. The OPCPA signal (650-850 nm) is first directed towards a 4-f pulse shaper which will be used for fine-tuning of the spectral-phase of the amplified mid-IR pulses. A time-delay stabilization system is used to keep the signal and pump beam overlapped in time [3].

© 2017 IEEE