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Ultrafast and Octave-Spanning Optical Nonlinearities from Strongly Phase-Mismatched Quadratic Interactions

B. B. Zhou, A. Chong, F. W. Wise, and M. Bache
Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 043902 – Published 26 July 2012
Physics logo See Synopsis: Cascading Compression

Abstract

Cascaded nonlinearities have attracted much interest, but ultrafast applications have been seriously hampered by the simultaneous requirements of being near phase matching and having ultrafast femtosecond response times. Here we show that in strongly phase-mismatched nonlinear frequency conversion crystals the pump pulse can experience a large and extremely broadband self-defocusing cascaded Kerr-like nonlinearity. The large cascaded nonlinearity is ensured through interaction with the largest quadratic tensor element in the crystal, and the strong phase mismatch ensures an ultrafast nonlinear response with an octave-spanning bandwidth. We verify this experimentally by showing few-cycle soliton compression with noncritical cascaded second-harmonic generation: Energetic 47 fs infrared pulses are compressed in a just 1-mm long bulk lithium niobate crystal to 17 fs (under 4 optical cycles) with 80% efficiency, and upon further propagation an octave-spanning supercontinuum is observed. Such ultrafast cascading is expected to occur for a broad range of pump wavelengths spanning the near- and mid-IR using standard nonlinear crystals.

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  • Received 19 September 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.043902

© 2012 American Physical Society

Synopsis

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Cascading Compression

Published 26 July 2012

A new method for compressing laser pulses overcomes power constraints that hamper current compressor technology.

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Authors & Affiliations

B. B. Zhou1, A. Chong2, F. W. Wise2, and M. Bache1,*

  • 1DTU Fotonik, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
  • 2Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

  • *moba@fotonik.dtu.dk

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Issue

Vol. 109, Iss. 4 — 27 July 2012

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