Abstract
We report the generation of octave-spanning supercontinuum pulses in an arrangement of thin transparent plates pumped by 60 fs infrared pulses tunable from 1.2 to 1.75 \(\upmu \mathrm{m}\). We demonstrate that the multiple plate technique allows scaling up the energy of the continuum to the level of hundreds of \(\upmu \mathrm{J}\) while avoiding optical damage and beam breakup due to multiple filamentation. We investigate the spatial and temporal structures of the continuum by performing XFROG and frequency-resolved angular spectra measurements and confirm that the continuum wave packet is well-behaved in time and space and possesses an estimated spectral energy density in excess of 10 nJ/nm throughout the range, which exceeds that of continua generated in bulk solids by more than two orders of magnitude. Finally, we demonstrate for the first time that the carrier-envelope phase stability of the multi-plate continuum is comparable to that of a continuum generated in a bulk medium.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
R.R. Alfano, S.L. Shapiro, Emission in the region 4000 to 7000 å via four-photon coupling in glass. Phys. Rev. Lett. 24(11), 584 (1970)
R.R. Alfano, The supercontinuum laser source (Springer, New York, 1989)
A. Couairon, A. Mysyrowicz, Femtosecond filamentation in transparent media. Phys. Rep. 441(2), 47–189 (2007)
M. Bradler, P. Baum, E. Riedle, Femtosecond continuum generation in bulk laser host materials with sub-\(\mu\)j pump pulses. Appl. Phys. B 97(3), 561–574 (2009)
F. Silva, D.R. Austin, A. Thai, M. Baudisch, M. Hemmer, D. Faccio, A. Couairon, J. Biegert, Multi-octave supercontinuum generation from mid-infrared filamentation in a bulk crystal. Nat. Commun. 3, 807 (2012)
J. Darginavičius, D. Majus, V. Jukna, N. Garejev, G. Valiulis, A. Couairon, A. Dubietis, Ultrabroadband supercontinuum and third-harmonic generation in bulk solids with two optical-cycle carrier-envelope phase-stable pulses at 2 \(\mu\)m. Opt. Express 21(21), 25210–25220 (2013)
H. Liang, P. Krogen, R. Grynko, O. Novak, Chun-Lin Chang, G.J. Stein, D. Weerawarne, B. Shim, F.X. Kärtner, K.H. Hong, Three-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation and sub-two-cycle self-compression of mid-infrared filaments in dielectrics. Opt. Lett. 40(6), 1069–1072 (2015)
A.A. Lanin, A.A. Voronin, E.A. Stepanov, A.B. Fedotov, A.M. Zheltikov, Multioctave, 3–18 \(\mu\)m sub-two-cycle supercontinua from self-compressing, self-focusing soliton transients in a solid. Opt. Lett. 40(6), 974–977 (2015)
I. Gražulevičiūtė, R. Šuminas, G. Tamošauskas, A. Couairon, A. Dubietis, Carrier-envelope phase-stable spatiotemporal light bullets. Opt. Lett. 40(16), 3719–3722 (2015)
L. Bergé, S. Mauger, S. Skupin, Multifilamentation of powerful optical pulses in silica. Phys. Rev. A 81(1), 013817 (2010)
L. Chih-Hsuan, Y.J. Tsou, H.Y. Chen, B.H. Chen, Y.C. Cheng, S.D. Yang, M.C. Chen, C.C. Hsu, A.H. Kung, Generation of intense supercontinuum in condensed media. Optica 1(6), 400–406 (2014)
Y.C. Cheng, L. Chih-Hsuan, Y.Y. Lin, A.H. Kung, Supercontinuum generation in a multi-plate medium. Opt. Express 24(7), 7224–7231 (2016)
M. Seidel, G. Arisholm, J. Brons, V. Pervak, O. Pronin, All solid-state spectral broadening: an average and peak power scalable method for compression of ultrashort pulses. Opt. Express 24(9), 9412–9428 (2016)
J.E. Rothenberg, Space-time focusing: breakdown of the slowly varying envelope approximation in the self-focusing of femtosecond pulses. Opt. Lett. 17(19), 1340–1342 (1992)
J.K. Ranka, A.L. Gaeta, Breakdown of the slowly varying envelope approximation in the self-focusing of ultrashort pulses. Opt. Lett. 23(7), 534–536 (1998)
S.A. Frolov, V.I. Trunov, V.E. Leshchenko, E.V. Pestryakov, Multi-octave supercontinuum generation with IR radiation filamentation in transparent solid-state media. Appl. Phys. B 122(5), 1–7 (2016)
M. Kolesik, E.M. Wright, J.V. Moloney, Interpretation of the spectrally resolved far field of femtosecond pulses propagating in bulk nonlinear dispersive media. Opt. Express 13(26), 10729–10741 (2005)
A.E. Dormidonov, V.P. Kandidov, Interference model of femtosecond laser pulse conical emission in dispersive medium. Laser Phys. 19(10), 1993–2001 (2009)
R. Trebino, Frequency-resolved optical gating: the measurement of ultrashort laser pulses (Springer, New York, 2012)
E.R. Peck, K. Reeder. Dispersion of air. JOSA 62(8), 958–962 (1972)
S.V. Chekalin, A.E. Dokukina, A.E. Dormidonov, V.O. Kompanets, E.O. Smetanina, V.P. Kandidov, Light bullets from a femtosecond filament. J. Phys. B Atom. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48(9), 094008 (2015)
C.H. Lu, Y.J. Tsou, H.Y. Chen, B.H. Chen, Y.C. Cheng, P.C. Huang, S.D. Yang, M.C. Chen, C.C. Hsu, A.H. Kung. Generation of intense supercontinuum in condensed media. In: 2015 European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics-European Quantum Electronics Conference, p. CF31. Optical Society of America (2015)
M. Kakehata, H. Takada, Y. Kobayashi, K. Torizuka, Y. Fujihira, T. Homma, H. Takahashi, Single-shot measurement of carrier-envelope phase changes by spectral interferometry. Opt. Lett. 26(18), 1436–1438 (2001)
Acknowledgements
This work was partially funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (Grant No. MIP-055/2014) and EU Seventh Framework Programme (Grant Agreement No. 284464).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Budriūnas, R., Kučinskas, D. & Varanavičius, A. High-energy continuum generation in an array of thin plates pumped by tunable femtosecond IR pulses. Appl. Phys. B 123, 212 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-017-6785-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-017-6785-9