Nonlinear compression toward high-energy single-cycle pulses by cascaded focus and compression

Ming-Shian Tsai; An-Yuan Liang; Chia-Lun Tsai; Po-Wei Lai; Ming-Wei Lin; Ming-Chang Chen

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo1945

Nonlinear compression toward high-energy single-cycle pulses by cascaded focus and compression

Sci Adv. 2022 Aug 5;8(31):eabo1945. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abo1945. Epub 2022 Aug 3.

Authors

Ming-Shian Tsai¹, An-Yuan Liang¹, Chia-Lun Tsai¹, Po-Wei Lai², Ming-Wei Lin², Ming-Chang Chen^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Photonics Technologies, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 300044, Taiwan.
² Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 300044, Taiwan.
³ Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 300044, Taiwan.
⁴ Frontier Research Center on Fundamental and Applied Sciences of Matters, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Abstract

The advancement of contemporary ultrafast science requires reliable sources to provide high-energy few-cycle light pulses. Through experiments and simulations, we demonstrate an arrangement of pulse postcompression, referred to as cascaded focus and compression (CASCADE), for generating millijoule-level, single-cycle pulses in a compact fashion. CASCADE is realized by a series of foci in matter, whereas pulse compression is provided immediately after each focus to maintain a high efficiency of spectral broadening. By implementing four stages of CASCADE in argon cells, we achieve 50-fold compression of millijoule-level pulses at 1030 nanometers from 157 to 3.1 femtoseconds, with an output pulse energy of 0.98 millijoules and a transmission efficiency of 73%. When driving high harmonic generation, these single-cycle pulses enable the creation of a carrier-envelope phase-dependent extreme ultraviolet continuum with energies extending up to 180 electron volts, providing isolated attosecond pulses at the output.