Compression of high-energy ultrashort laser pulses through an argon-filled tapered planar waveguide

Shihua Chen (1) , Amélie Jarnac (2) , Aurélien Houard (1) , Yi Liu (1) , Cord L. Arnold (1) , Bing Zhou (1) , Benjamin Forestier (1) , Bernard Prade (1) , André Mysyrowicz (1)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 ILM - Interaction Laser-Matière

We propose a hollow tapered planar waveguide for compression of high-energy ultrashort laser pulses. Direct measurements suggest that it seems to find a very good trade-off among the energy throughput, the beam focusability, and the pulse compressibility. With a Ti:sapphire laser pulse of 12.0 mJ and 40 fs , our experiment produces an output pulse of 9.4 fs duration with energy 9.1 mJ (transverse magnetic mode) or 10.0 mJ (transverse electric mode) in argon, each exhibiting a nice spatial mode. To evaluate such a tapered waveguide, the linear wave propagation theory and the solution to its complex propagation constant are also presented.

Keywords: Ultrafast Optics

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

Shihua Chen, Amélie Jarnac, Aurélien Houard, Yi Liu, Cord L. Arnold, et al.. Compression of high-energy ultrashort laser pulses through an argon-filled tapered planar waveguide. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 2011, 28 (5), pp.1009. ⟨10.1364/JOSAB.28.001009⟩. ⟨hal-00852002⟩