Nonlinear compression of high energy fiber amplifier pulses in air-filled hypocycloid-core Kagome fiber

Florent Guichard (1, 2) , Achut Giree (3) , Yoann Zaouter (1) , Marc Hanna (2) , Guillaume Machinet (1) , Benoît Debord (4) , Frédéric Gérôme (4) , Pascal Dupriez (5) , Frédéric Druon (2) , Clemens Hönninger (1) , Eric Mottay (1) , Fetah A. Benabid (4) , Patrick Georges (2)

1 Amplitude Systèmes
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Lasers
3 Amplitude Technologies
4 XLIM-PHOTONIQUE - PHOTONIQUE
5 ALPhANOV

We report on the generation of 34 fs and 50 µJ pulses from a high energy fiber amplifier system with nonlinear compression in an air-filled hypocycloid-core Kagome fiber. The unique properties of such fibers allow bridging the gap between solid core fibers-based and hollow capillary-based post-compression setups, thereby operating with pulse energies obtained with current state-of-the-art fiber systems. The overall transmission of the compression setup is over 70%. Together with Yb-doped fiber amplifier technologies, Kagome fibers therefore appear as a promising tool for efficient generation of pulses with durations below 50 fs, energies ranging from 10 to several hundreds of µJ, and high average powers.

Keywords: (3207110) Ultrafast nonlinear optics; (3205520) Pulse compression; (3207090) Ultrafast lasers; OCIS codes: (0605295) Photonic crystal fibers; (1403510) Lasers; fiber

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Florent Guichard, Achut Giree, Yoann Zaouter, Marc Hanna, Guillaume Machinet, et al.. Nonlinear compression of high energy fiber amplifier pulses in air-filled hypocycloid-core Kagome fiber. Optics Express, 2015, 23 (6), pp.7416-7423. ⟨10.1364/OE.23.007416⟩. ⟨hal-01163889⟩