An efficient high-power femtosecond laser based on periodic-layered-Kerr media nonlinear compression and a Yb:YAG regenerative amplifier. (18th February 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Guo, Jie; Gao, Zichen; Sun, Di; Du, Xiao; Gao, Yongxi; Liang, Xiaoyan
• Is Part Of: High power laser science and engineering. Volume 10(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-02-18
• Subjects: high-power ultrafast source -- post-compression -- self-phase modulation; High power lasers -- Periodicals; 621.366
• DOI: 10.1017/hpl.2022.3
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2095-4719

Abstract

Abstract: We demonstrate an efficient ultrafast source with 195 fs pulse duration, 54 W average power at 200 kHz repetition rate and near diffraction-limited beam quality. The compact setup incorporates a thin-disk Yb:YAG regenerative amplifier (RA) and a subsequent nonlinear pulse compression stage with periodic-layered Kerr media (PLKM), which is one of the multiple-thin-solid-plate schemes based on nonlinear resonator theory. In virtue of the formation of quasi-stationary spatial soliton in PLKM, the near diffraction-limited beam quality of the RA remained almost undisturbed after post-compression. The nonlinear pulse compression module is simple and efficient with a transmission of 96%. To the best our knowledge, for pulse energy over 200 μJ, this is the highest output power reported for the multiple-thin-solid-plate scheme. This source manifests an economical combination to mitigate the bandwidth limitations of Yb-based high-power chirped pulse amplifiers.