We demonstrate experimentally the full tunability of a coherent femtosecond source in the whole ultraviolet spectral region. The experiment relies on the technique of high-order harmonic generation driven by a near-infrared parametric laser source in krypton gas. By tuning the drive wavelength in the range between 1100 to 1900 nm, we generated intense harmonics from near to extreme ultraviolet. A number of photons per shot of the order of 10^7 has been measured for the first harmonic orders. Many novel scientific prospects are expected to benefit from the use of such a table-top tunable source.
We describe a tunable broadband mid-infrared laser source based on difference-frequency mixing of a 100 MHz femtosecond Yb:fiber laser oscillator and a Raman-shifted soliton generated with the same laser. The resulting light is tunable over 3.0 um to 4.4 um, with a FWHM bandwidth of 170 nm and maximum average output power up to 125 mW. The noise and coherence properties of this source are also investigated and described.
Self-action nonlinearity is a key aspect -- either as a foundational element or a detrimental factor -- of several optical spectroscopies and photonic devices. Supercontinuum generation, wavelength converters and chirped pulse amplification are just a few examples. The recent advent of Free Electron Lasers (FEL) fostered building on nonlinearity to propose new concepts and extend optical wavelengths paradigms for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray regimes. No evidence for intrapulse dynamics, however, has been reported at such short wavelengths, where the light-matter interactions are ruled by the sharp absorption edges of core-electrons. Here, we provide experimental evidence for self-phase modulation of femtosecond FEL pulses, which we exploit for fine self-driven spectral tunability by interaction with sub-micrometric foils of selected monoatomic materials. Moving the pulse wavelength across the absorption edge, the spectral profile changes from a non-linear spectral blue-shift to a red-shifted broadening. These findings are rationalized accounting for ultrafast ionization and delayed thermal response of highly excited electrons above and below threshold, respectively.
A concept for continuously tunable titanium-sapphire (Ti:Sa) lasers using dispersion prisms is under investigation for the ARIEL (Advanced Rare IsotopE Laboratory) laser ion source at TRIUMF (Canadas particle accelerator center). Wavelength selection for pulsed Ti:Sa lasers used in hot cavity laser resonance ionization spectroscopy is usually done with birefringent filters (BRFs) and etalons or diffraction gratings. For resonance ionization spectroscopy a laser system allowing a continuous wavelength scan is necessary. Tunable lasers based on BRFs and etalons have high output powers however require synchronized optimization for continuous laser wavelength scans and are therefore laborious to use in scanning applications. Diffraction grating tuned lasers can provide continuous wavelength scan over 200 nm range but typically have lower output laser power due to the grating deformation under high pumping power. Aiming to overcome both shortcomings a laser design based on prisms as dispersing element has been revisited. Simulations on the beam path and optical reflectivity are done which show that these losses can be minimized to around 0.04 % for a tuning range from 700 nm up to 920 nm. Further improvement on the tuning range and reduction on the linewidth will be pursued.
The processes of energy gain and redistribution in a dense gas subject to an intense ultrashort laser pulse are investigated theoretically for the case of high-pressure argon. The electrons released via strong-field ionization and driven by oscillating laser field collide with neutral neighbor atoms, thus effecting the energy gain in the emerging electron gas via a short-range inverse Bremsstrahlung interaction. These collisions also cause excitation and impact ionization of the atoms thus reducing the electron-gas energy. A kinetic model of these competing processes is developed which predicts the prevalence of excited atoms over ionized atoms by the end of the laser pulse. The creation of a significant number of excited atoms during the pulse in high-pressure gases is consistent with the delayed ionization dynamics in the pulse wake, recently discovered by Gao et al.[1] This energy redistribution mechanism offers an approach to manage effectively the excitation vs. ionization patterns in dense gases interacting with intense laser pulses and thus opens new avenues for diagnostics and control in these settings.
Nanostructuring hard optical crystals has so far been exclusively feasible at their surface, as stress induced crack formation and propagation has rendered high precision volume processes ineffective. We show that the inner chemical etching reactivity of a crystal can be enhanced at the nanoscale by more than five orders of magnitude by means of direct laser writing. The process allows to produce cm-scale arbitrary three-dimensional nanostructures with 100 nm feature sizes inside large crystals in absence of brittle fracture. To showcase the unique potential of the technique, we fabricate photonic structures such as sub-wavelength diffraction gratings and nanostructured optical waveguides capable of sustaining sub-wavelength propagating modes inside yttrium aluminum garnet crystals. This technique could enable the transfer of concepts from nanophotonics to the fields of solid state lasers and crystal optics.