Continuous-wave injection-seeded multipass OPA for direct 1 W, 76 MHz, sub-50 fs pulse generation at 1.5-1.7 µm.

Area of Science:

• Nonlinear optics
• Ultrafast laser technology

Background:

• Generating sub-50 femtosecond (fs) laser pulses in the near-infrared (near-IR) is limited by the trade-off between amplification bandwidth and gain.
• Conventional methods like optical parametric oscillators (OPOs)/optical parametric amplification (OPA) often require multiple stages, increasing complexity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate a compact and simple solution for generating ultrashort near-IR laser pulses.
• To overcome the complexity associated with traditional multi-stage OPA systems.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a compact multipass optical parametric amplifier (OPA) technology.
• Employed a continuous-wave (cw)-seeded OPA configuration.
• Achieved tunable near-IR output from 1.5 to 1.7 µm.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated a watt-scale, low-noise, sub-50 fs optical parametric amplifier (OPA).
• The developed OPA is exceptionally compact and simple compared to conventional setups.
• Achieved tunable ultrashort pulse generation in the near-IR spectrum.

Conclusions:

• The compact multipass OPA technology offers an elegant solution for generating ultrashort near-IR pulses.
• This approach simplifies the generation of sub-50 fs pulses, avoiding complex multi-stage OPA systems.
• The demonstrated OPA provides a low-noise, watt-scale source tunable in the 1.5–1.7 µm range.