Optical parametric amplifier pulse cleaning driven by aperiodic frequency converter. (1st July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Refaeli, Zaharit; Marcus, Gilad; Suchowski, Haim; Shamir, Yariv
• Is Part Of: Physica scripta. Volume 97:Number 7(2022)
• Publication Date: 2022-07-01
• Subjects: parametric amplifiers -- pulse contrast -- second harmonic -- non-linear optics -- ultrafast laser -- aperiodicly poled crystal; Physics -- Periodicals; 530.05
• DOI: 10.1088/1402-4896/ac73bd
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0031-8949

Abstract

Abstract: We demonstrate temporal shape improvement of a short laser pulse using chirped aperiodic nonlinear frequency converter within an optical parametric amplifier. The aperiodic converter generated walk-off free high spatial quality pulse with ∼40% efficiency second harmonic while preserving the pump bandwidth. A <300 fs idler pulse was generated, with ∼10 nm central wavelength tunability around 1053 nm by pump generation and phase matching control. A pronounced contrast pedestal suppression of up to 40 dB was observed within a few picoseconds range around the peak. Such pedestal suppression has good scalability potential to high energies.