Table top TW-class OPCPA system driven by tandem femtosecond Yb:KGW and picosecond Nd:YAG lasers.

We present a compact TW-class OPCPA system operating at 800 nm. Broadband seed pulses are generated and pre-amplified to 25 μJ in a white light continuum seeded femtosecond NOPA. Amplification of the seed pulses to 35 mJ at a repetition rate of 10 Hz and compression to 9 fs is demonstrated.

Photon coincidences in spontaneous parametric down-converted radiation excited by a blue LED in bulk LiIO3 crystal.

We report on experimental and numerical investigation of two-photon coincidence properties of the parametric spontaneous down-converted field excited by a high brightness blue LED in bulk lithium iodate crystal. Ratio of up to 11.5% of coincidence, which cannot be attributed to classical coincidences, to single photon counts was recorded at the outputs of multimode fibers, demonstrating well-preserved biphoton property.

Femtosecond Yb:KGW MOPA driven broadband NOPA as a frontend for TW few-cycle pulse systems.

White light continuum seeded noncollinear optical parametric amplifier driven by Yb:KGW master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system is reported. The demonstrated design provides amplification of broadband pulses at 800 nm up to 20 µJ energy at 1 kHz repetition rate and can be used as simple and reliable frontend source for systems producing high intensity few-cycle pulses. The amplified spectral bandwidth allows for <7 fs pulse durations and preliminary compression of partial spectrum yields sub-10 fs pulse.

Generation of broadly tunable sub-30-fs infrared pulses by four-wave optical parametric amplification.

We report on the generation of sub-30-fs near-IR light pulses by means of broadband four-wave parametric amplification in fused silica. This is achieved by frequency downconversion of visible broadband pulses provided by a commercial blue-pumped beta-barium borate crystal-based noncollinear optical parametric amplifier. The proposed method produces the IR idler pulses with energy up to ∼20 μJ and tunable in wavelength from 1 to 1.

Generation of 30-fs ultraviolet pulses by four-wave optical parametric chirped pulse amplification.

We report on the generation of approximately 30-fs ultraviolet pulses with approximately 10 microJ energy by means of four-wave optical parametric chirped pulse amplification in fused silica. The four-wave optical parametric amplifier is pumped by the second-harmonic of the Ti:sapphire laser and is seeded by visible broadband chirped signal pulses. The idler pulses are produced in the ultraviolet by four-wave mixing and are compressed in a medium with normal group velocity dispersion.