Influence of spectral phase on cross-polarized wave generation with short femtosecond pulses

Lorenzo Canova (1) , Olivier Albert (1) , Nicolas Forget (2) , Brigitte Mercier (1) , Stoyan Kourtev (3) , Nikolay Minkovski (3) , Solomon M. Saltiel (3) , Rodrigo B. Lopez-Martens (1)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 Fastlite, XTEC
3 Faculty of Physics

In this paper we present the first comprehensive study of the role of spectral phase on cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation using sub-30 femtosecond (fs) laser pulses. XPW generation improves the temporal contrast and shortens the pulse duration of fs chirped pulse amplification (CPA) lasers. For Ti:Sa lasers, compression below 30 fs is non-trivial and therefore never perfect. We therefore systematically analyze the effect of an arbitrary input spectral phase on the output spectrum and efficiency of the XPW process, both theoretically and experimentally. We derive the maximum acceptable value of residual phase for a given initial pulse duration in order to efficiently drive the XPW process for pulse shortening and contrast improvement.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Lorenzo Canova, Olivier Albert, Nicolas Forget, Brigitte Mercier, Stoyan Kourtev, et al.. Influence of spectral phase on cross-polarized wave generation with short femtosecond pulses. Applied Physics B - Laser and Optics, 2008, 93 (2-3), pp.443-453. ⟨10.1007/s00340-008-3185-1⟩. ⟨hal-00528322⟩