Abstract

We report a high-power, kilohertz, collinear phase-matching ultrafast optical parametric amplifier (OPA) that is capable of producing 70-µJ, ∼150-fs infrared laser pulses at wavelengths ranging from 2.9 to 4.0 µm. The OPA system was seeded with a broadband white-light continuum, which was carefully characterized experimentally. The retrieved electric field of the white-light seed pulse was incorporated in a simulation. The simulated results almost perfectly matched the experimental results of our OPA system. We used the simulation further to investigate the interplay between material dispersion and optical nonlinearity in ultrafast OPA systems and to examine the role of white-light seed pulses in such systems.

© 2004 Optical Society of America

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