Spectral broadening and dispersion compensation of mid-infrared femtosecond pulses

Efficient spectral broadening of mid-infrared pulses by use of a GaAs crystal has been demonstrated. The spectral bandwidths of the pulses at 5-μm wavelength increased from 540 nm to 2060 nm. The main advantages of this material are its large third-order nonlinearity and its transparency range (1 18...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2010 23rd Annual Meeting of the IEEE Photonics Society pp. 540 - 541
Main Authors Ashihara, S, Kawahara, Y, Hirasawa, Y
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Japanese
Published IEEE 01.11.2010
Subjects
Crystals
Dispersion
Gallium arsenide
Laser beams
Optical interferometry
Optical pulses
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Summary:Efficient spectral broadening of mid-infrared pulses by use of a GaAs crystal has been demonstrated. The spectral bandwidths of the pulses at 5-μm wavelength increased from 540 nm to 2060 nm. The main advantages of this material are its large third-order nonlinearity and its transparency range (1 18 μm), which fully covers the molecular fingerprint region. We have also demonstrated that the second-order dispersion compensation with a CaF2 plate generated the compressed pulses with 3 optical cycles. The demonstrated scheme should work at any wavelength within the materials transparency range, and therefore be useful for spectral broadening of pulses generated from the well-established OPA-DFG system. Arbitrary shaping of the broadband mid-infrared pulses using 4f-pulse shaper would be beneficial for nonlinear vibrational spectroscopy and coherent control experiments.
ISBN:9781424453689
1424453682
ISSN:1092-8081
DOI:10.1109/PHOTONICS.2010.5699000