Near- and Extended-Edge X-Ray-Absorption Fine-Structure Spectroscopy Using Ultrafast Coherent High-Order Harmonic Supercontinua.

Recent advances in high-order harmonic generation have made it possible to use a tabletop-scale setup to produce spatially and temporally coherent beams of light with bandwidth spanning 12 octaves, from the ultraviolet up to x-ray photon energies >1.6 keV. Here we demonstrate the use of this light for x-ray-absorption spectroscopy at the K- and L-absorption edges of solids at photon energies near 1 keV. We also report x-ray-absorption spectroscopy in the water window spectral region (284-543 eV) using a high flux high-order harmonic generation x-ray supercontinuum with 10^{9} photons/s in 1% bandwidth, 3 orders of magnitude larger than has previously been possible using tabletop sources. Since this x-ray radiation emerges as a single attosecond-to-femtosecond pulse with peak brightness exceeding 10^{26} photons/s/mrad^{2}/mm^{2}/1% bandwidth, these novel coherent x-ray sources are ideal for probing the fastest molecular and materials processes on femtosecond-to-attosecond time scales and picometer length scales.

High-energy pulse stacking via regenerative pulse-burst amplification.

Here we present a coherent pulse stacking approach for upscaling the energy of a solid-state femtosecond chirped pulse amplifier. We demonstrate pulse splitting into four replicas, amplification in a burst-mode regenerative Yb:CaF2 amplifier, designed to overcome intracavity optical damage by colliding pulse replicas, and coherent combining into a single millijoule level pulse. The thresholds of pulse-burst-induced damage of optical elements are experimentally investigated. The scheme allows achieving an enhancement factor of 2.62 using a single-stage stacker cavity and, potentially, much higher enhancement factors using cascaded stacking.

Ultrafast multi-wavelength switch based on dynamics of spectrally-shifted solitons in a dual­core photonic crystal fiber.

Nonlinear propagation of ultrafast near infrared pulses in anomalous dispersion region of dual-core photonic crystal fiber was studied. Polarization tunable soliton-based nonlinear switching at multiple non-excitation wavelengths was demonstrated experimentally for fiber excitation by 100 fs pulses at 1650 nm. The highest-contrast switching was obtained with the fiber length of just 14 mm, which is significantly shorter compared to the conventional non-solitonic in-fiber switching based on nonlinear optical loop mirror. Advanced numerical simulations show good agreement with the experimental results, suggesting that the underlying dual-core soliton fission process supports nonlinear optical switching and simultaneous pulse compression to few-cycle durations at the level of 20 fs.

Bright coherent ultrahigh harmonics in the keV x-ray regime from mid-infrared femtosecond lasers.

High-harmonic generation (HHG) traditionally combines ~100 near-infrared laser photons to generate bright, phase-matched, extreme ultraviolet beams when the emission from many atoms adds constructively. Here, we show that by guiding a mid-infrared femtosecond laser in a high-pressure gas, ultrahigh harmonics can be generated, up to orders greater than 5000, that emerge as a bright supercontinuum that spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum from the ultraviolet to more than 1.6 kilo-electron volts, allowing, in principle, the generation of pulses as short as 2.5 attoseconds. The multiatmosphere gas pressures required for bright, phase-matched emission also support laser beam self-confinement, further enhancing the x-ray yield. Finally, the x-ray beam exhibits high spatial coherence, even though at high gas density the recolliding electrons responsible for HHG encounter other atoms during the emission process.

90 GW peak power few-cycle mid-infrared pulses from an optical parametric amplifier.

We demonstrate a compact 20 Hz repetition-rate mid-IR OPCPA system operating at a central wavelength of 3900 nm with the tail-to-tail spectrum extending over 600 nm and delivering 8 mJ pulses that are compressed to 83 fs (<7 optical cycles). Because of the long optical period (∼13 fs) and a high peak power, the system opens a range of unprecedented opportunities for tabletop ultrafast science and is particularly attractive as a driver for a highly efficient generation of ultrafast coherent x-ray continua for biomolecular and element specific imaging.

Carrier envelope phase stabilization of a Yb:KGW laser amplifier.

In this paper we report on the active stabilization of the carrier envelope phase (CEP) of a Yb:KGW chirped pulse amplifier laser system seeded by a Yb-doped solid-state Kerr-lens mode-locked oscillator. The regenerative amplifier delivers 180 fs CEP stable pulses of 30 µJ-1 mJ energy at a repetition rate tunable from 1 to 200 kHz. The bandwidth of the feedback loop was extended by a factor of 5 using a specially designed high-pass filter, which resulted in a dramatic decrease of CEP jitter below 0.45 rad after the amplifier.