Intense self-compressed, self-phase-stabilized few-cycle pulses at 2 μm from an optical filament

C.P. Hauri (1) , Rodrigo B. Lopez-Martens (1) , C. I. Blaga (2) , K. D. Schultz (2) , J. Cryan (2) , R. Chirla (2) , P. Colosimo (2) , G. Doumy (2) , A. M. March (2) , C. Roedig (2) , E. Sistrunk (2) , J. Tate (2) , J. Wheeler (2) , L. F. Dimauro (2) , E. P. Power (3)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 Department of Physics
3 CUOS - Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences

We report the compression of intense, carrier-envelope phase stable mid-IR pulses down to few-cycle duration using an optical filament. A filament in xenon gas is formed by using self-phase stabilized 330 μJ 55 fs pulses at 2 μm produced via difference-frequency generation in a Ti:sapphire-pumped optical parametric amplifier. The ultrabroadband 2 μm carrier-wavelength output is self-compressed below 3 optical cycles and has a 270 μJ pulse energy. The self-locked phase offset of the 2 μm difference-frequency field is preserved after filamentation. This is to our knowledge the first experimental realization of pulse compression in optical filaments at mid-IR wavelengths (λ>0.8 μm).

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

C.P. Hauri, Rodrigo B. Lopez-Martens, C. I. Blaga, K. D. Schultz, J. Cryan, et al.. Intense self-compressed, self-phase-stabilized few-cycle pulses at 2 μm from an optical filament. Optics Letters, 2007, 32 (7), pp.868-870. ⟨10.1364/OL.32.000868⟩. ⟨hal-00553198⟩