Supercontinuum-seeded few-cycle mid-infrared OPCPA system.

We propose and demonstrate an OPCPA architecture emitting few-cycle pulses at 3070 nm and 1550 nm based on a high-energy femtosecond ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier pump. The short pump pulse duration allows direct seeding by a supercontinuum in the 1.4 - 1.

Spectral and spatial full-bandwidth correlation analysis of bulk-generated supercontinuum in the mid-infrared.

We report the measurement of spectral and spatial correlations in supercontinua generated by focusing microjoule pulses from a femtosecond ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier laser in bulk YAG. The measurement is full-bandwidth at a repetition rate of 1 MHz owing to the use of time-stretch dispersive Fourier transform technique. In contrast with fiber-based supercontinuum generation, our results show an excellent stability of the spectral and spatial properties of the output supercontinuum, with an essentially correlated behavior in the 1.