Optical pulse compressors

Y.B. Band, D.J. Harter, and R. Bavli, "Optical Pulse Compressors Composed of Saturable and Reverse Saturable Absorbers",to be published. S. Spieser and N. Shakkur, Appl. Phys, in press. 

Experiments were performed using a visible optical parametric amplifier based on noncollinear phase-matching in /3-barium borate, followed by a pulse compressor using chirped dielectric mirrors. This optical source provides ultrabroadband pulses, with bandwidth extending from 500 to 720 nm, compressed to an almost transform-limited duration of 5-6 fs. The pump-... 

Figure 7 Schematic of the laser system used in the Raman FID and echo experiments. PC = Pulse compressor AOM = acousto-optic modulator PD = photodiode FB = feedback electronics PBS = polarizing beamsplitter 3PBF = 3-plate birefringent filter SDL/LDL = Stokes/Laser dye laser P = pellicle AC = autocorrelator OC = output coupler LBO/KDP = doubling crystals. Final pulses have widths of 0.5-1 ps and energies of 0.3-1 mJ (From Ref. 6.)... 

Deterministic non-periodic Fibonacci structures have a specific feature not present in periodic ones. Quarter-wave Fibonacci multilayers can contain more layers than periodic ones on the same length scale because they can have more layers with high index of refraction which are geometrically thinner. This allows to increase the dispersion of the structure and to decrease geometrical compression length for optical chirped pulses. Theoretical analysis has shown that this diminish can amount to as much as 10 times (compared to periodic stacks) if the refraction index contrast is high. Therefore these structures can minimize the size of compressors for chirped optical pulses. 

M. Haner, W.S. Warren, Synthesis of crafted optical pulses by time domain modulation in a fiber-grating compressor, Appl. Phys. Lett. 52 (1988) 1459. 

Fig. 2.29. Top view of the femtosecond pulse compressor (Quantronix model 4822) and laser beam tracing. The compressor is built up in the same housing as the stretcher and the laser pulses run a similar way back, using the optical components of the pulse stretcher, especially the diffractive grating. By means of the Faraday rotator (FR) the polarization of the light pulses is timned 90° (45° for each through run) and hence, at the latter thin-film polarizer (TFP) the pulses are now reflected. A aperture (by courtesy of Quantronix)...

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