High energy femtosecond fiber chirped pulse amplification system with adaptive phase control

F He; H S S Hung; J H V Price; N K Daga; N Naz; J Prawiharjo; D C Hanna; D P Shepherd; D J Richardson; J W Dawson; C W Siders; C P Barty

doi:10.1364/oe.16.005813

High energy femtosecond fiber chirped pulse amplification system with adaptive phase control

Opt Express. 2008 Apr 14;16(8):5813-21. doi: 10.1364/oe.16.005813.

Authors

F He¹, H S S Hung, J H V Price, N K Daga, N Naz, J Prawiharjo, D C Hanna, D P Shepherd, D J Richardson, J W Dawson, C W Siders, C P Barty

Affiliation

¹ Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.

PMID: 18542692
DOI: 10.1364/oe.16.005813

Abstract

We demonstrate increased peak power from an Yb fiber CPA system operating with strong self-phase modulation by shaping the spectral-phase of the input pulses. An adaptive control loop used feedback from the output autocorrelation. We investigated pre-compensation of both SPM phase distortion at high energies, and residual dispersion from mismatched stretcher/compressor technologies at low energies. Phase shaping resulted in improved pulse quality. When using a bulk grating stretcher, shaping increased the autocorrelation peak by a factor of 2.9, and with a fiber stretcher, shaping increased the autocorrelation peak by a factor of 3.4. High-quality 800 fs, 65 microJ recompressed pulses were produced. This technique could benefit a wide variety of fiber amplifier systems and is self-optimising for operation at both low and high pulse energies.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Amplifiers, Electronic*
Computer Simulation
Computer-Aided Design*
Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis
Fiber Optic Technology / instrumentation*
Lasers*
Models, Theoretical*
Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation*