High peak-power stretcher-free femtosecond fiber amplifier using passive spatio-temporal coherent combining

Louis Daniault (1) , Marc Hanna (1) , Dimitris N. Papadopoulos (1, 2) , Yoann Zaouter (3) , Eric Mottay (3) , Frédéric Druon (1) , Patrick Georges (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Lasers
2 LULI - Laboratoire pour l'utilisation des lasers intenses
3 Amplitude Systèmes

We report on the passive coherent combining of up to 8 temporally and spatially separated ultrashort pulses amplified in a stretcher-free ytterbium-doped fiber system. An initial femtosecond pulse is split into 4 temporal replicas using divided-pulse amplification, and subsequently divided in two counter-propagating beams in a Sagnac interferometer containing a fiber amplifier. The spatio-temporal distribution of the peak-power inside the amplifier allows the generation of record 3.1 µJ and 50 fs pulses at 1 MHz of repetition rate with 52 MW of peak-power from a stretcher-free fiber amplifier and without additional nonlinear post-compression stages.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Louis Daniault, Marc Hanna, Dimitris N. Papadopoulos, Yoann Zaouter, Eric Mottay, et al.. High peak-power stretcher-free femtosecond fiber amplifier using passive spatio-temporal coherent combining. Optics Express, 2012, 20 (19), pp.26705. ⟨10.1364/OE.20.021627⟩. ⟨hal-00757579⟩