Control of the superfluorescence for compact optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

Abstract

A compact optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system has been demonstrated, in which a novel double-pass optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier was introduced. The signal was double-pass amplified in the second nonlinear crystal by a long pump pulse, and the signal and pump pulses of each pass were completely phase matched in the plane of the maximum effective nonlinearity. The superfluorescence was markedly suppressed to less than 1% of the total output pulse energy with a total saturation gain of ∼3 × 10⁷ and single pulse energy fluctuation less than 3% rms.

Keywords:

• laser amplifiers; parametric oscillators and amplifiers; ultrafast lasers; ultrafast technology

Acknowledgements

This project is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (under Grant Nos. 60408002, 60678013, 60537060) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shannxi Province in China (under Grant No. 2004F02).