Ultrafast amplifier additive timing jitter characterization and control.

Area of Science:

• Ultrafast lasers
• Optical physics
• Precision measurement

Background:

• Femtosecond Ytterbium (Yb) regenerative amplifiers are crucial for scientific research, but their timing jitter can limit performance.
• Accurate characterization of additive timing jitter is essential for improving the stability of these amplifiers.
• Existing methods may not be sufficiently sensitive or suitable for Yb amplifier systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To characterize the additive timing jitter introduced by a 100 kHz femtosecond Yb regenerative amplifier.
• To develop and validate a long-term compensation strategy for amplifier timing drift.
• To assess the suitability of balanced optical cross-correlation for jitter measurement in Yb systems.

Main Methods:

• Employed a balanced optical cross-correlation technique in a noncollinear configuration for background-free coincidence detection.
• Generated a jitter error signal to measure additive timing jitter.
• Integrated jitter measurements from 0.1 Hz to 10 kHz, achieving a noise floor of 300 attoseconds (as).

Main Results:

• Measured the additive timing jitter of the Yb amplifier to be approximately 5 femtoseconds (fs) integrated from 0.1 Hz to 10 kHz.
• Demonstrated the capability to characterize and control amplifier timing drift over periods exceeding one hour.
• Validated the balanced optical cross-correlation method for characterizing jitter in Yb amplifiers seeded by narrow spectrum Yb oscillators.

Conclusions:

• The balanced optical cross-correlation technique effectively characterizes additive timing jitter in femtosecond Yb regenerative amplifiers.
• The measured timing jitter of 5 fs is sufficiently low for many demanding applications.
• Long-term stability control of the amplifier timing is achievable, paving the way for enhanced experimental precision.