Self-compression in a multipass cell

Gaëtan Jargot (1) , Nour Daher (2) , Loic Lavenu (3) , Xavier Delen (2) , Nicolas Forget (4) , Marc Hanna (2) , Patrick Georges (2)

1 FASTLITE - Ultrafast scientific Instrumentation
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Lasers
3 Amplitude Systèmes
4 LULI - Laboratoire pour l'utilisation des lasers intenses

We demonstrate self-compression of short-wavelength infrared pulses in a multipass cell (MPC) containing a plate of silica. Nonlinear propagation in the cell in the anomalous dispersion regime results in the generation of 14 μJ 22 fs pulses at 125 kHz repetition rate and 1550 nm wavelength. Periodic focusing inside the cell allows us to circumvent catastrophic self-focusing, despite an output peak power of 440 MW well beyond the critical power in silica of 10 MW. This technique allows straightforward energy scaling of self-compression setups and control over the spatial manifestation of Kerr nonlinearity. More generally, MPCs can be used to perform, at higher energy levels, temporal manipulations of pulses that have been previously demonstrated in waveguides.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Gaëtan Jargot, Nour Daher, Loic Lavenu, Xavier Delen, Nicolas Forget, et al.. Self-compression in a multipass cell. Optics Letters, 2018, 43 (22), pp.5643. ⟨10.1364/OL.43.005643⟩. ⟨hal-02348758⟩