Watt-scale 50-MHz source of single-cycle waveform-stable pulses in the molecular fingerprint region

T P Butler; D Gerz; C Hofer; J Xu; C Gaida; T Heuermann; M Gebhardt; L Vamos; W Schweinberger; J A Gessner; T Siefke; M Heusinger; U Zeitner; A Apolonski; N Karpowicz; J Limpert; F Krausz; I Pupeza

doi:10.1364/OL.44.001730

Watt-scale 50-MHz source of single-cycle waveform-stable pulses in the molecular fingerprint region

Opt Lett. 2019 Apr 1;44(7):1730-1733. doi: 10.1364/OL.44.001730.

Authors

T P Butler, D Gerz, C Hofer, J Xu, C Gaida, T Heuermann, M Gebhardt, L Vamos, W Schweinberger, J A Gessner, T Siefke, M Heusinger, U Zeitner, A Apolonski, N Karpowicz, J Limpert, F Krausz, I Pupeza

PMID: 30933133
DOI: 10.1364/OL.44.001730

Abstract

We report a coherent mid-infrared (MIR) source with a combination of broad spectral coverage (6-18 μm), high repetition rate (50 MHz), and high average power (0.5 W). The waveform-stable pulses emerge via intrapulse difference-frequency generation (IPDFG) in a GaSe crystal, driven by a 30-W-average-power train of 32-fs pulses spectrally centered at 2 μm, delivered by a fiber-laser system. Electro-optic sampling (EOS) of the waveform-stable MIR waveforms reveals their single-cycle nature, confirming the excellent phase matching both of IPDFG and of EOS with 2-μm pulses in GaSe.