A compact two-stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on photonic crystal fibre is demonstrated. A 1064-nm soliton pulse is obtained in a home-made photonic crystal fibre （PCF） with femtosecond pulse pumping and then amplified to 2 mJ in an Nd：YAG regenerative amplifier. After the amplified pulses pass through the LBO crystal, the 532-nm double-frequency light with an energy of 0.8 mJ and a duration of over 100 ps at 10-Hz repetition rate is generated as a pump source in the following two-stage optical parametric amplification （OPA）. The 850-nm chirped signal light gain from the stretcher is 1.5 × 10^4 in the first-stage OPA while it is 120 in the second-stage OPA. The total signal gain of optical parametric chirped pulse amplification （OPCPA） can reach 1.8 × 10^6.
A mode-locked（ML）picosecond ytterbium-doped thin disk laser using a monolayer Mo S2as the saturable absorber（SA）is demonstrated.The monolayer MoS2 is fabricated through the method of low-pressure chemical vapor deposition.The laser directly produces stable ML picosecond pulses at a slope efficiency of 9.71%.The maximum output power is approximately 890 mW,while the corresponding repetition,pulse energy,and pulse duration are 48.6 MHz,18.3 nJ,and 13.1 ps,respectively.Results suggest that the monolayer MoS2 is a promising SA for ultrafast lasers system.
We build a frequency resolved optical gating （FROG） setup based on the second harmonic generation （SHG） FROG to characterize the mid-infrared （MIR） few-cycle laser pulse in single shot basis. Considering the extremely wide bandwidth, we use 20-μm-thick BBO crystal as the nonlinear medium, and correct the spectral response with the frequency summing efficiency. Spatial splitting is adopted to avoid additional material dispersion. In combination with a 4f imaging, this configuration enables the setup to run in single shot. With the central wavelength of 1.8 μm, the measured pulse has a duration of 9.3 fs, which corresponds to about 1.5 cycles.
We theoretically study the nonlinear compression of a 20-rnJ, 1030-nm picosecond chirped pulse from the thin-disk amplifier in a krypton gas-filled hollow-core fiber. The chirp from the thin-disk amplifier system has little influence on the initial pulse, however, it shows an effect on the nonlinear compression in hollow-core fiber. We use a large diameter hollow waveguide to restrict undesirable nonlinear effects such as ionization; on the other hand, we employ suitable gas pressure and fiber length to promise enough spectral broadening; with 600-μm, 6-bar （1 bar = 105 Pa）, 1.8-m hollow fiber, we obtain 31.5-fs pulse. Moreover, we calculate and discuss the optimal fiber lengths and gas pressures with different initial durations induced by different grating compression angles for reaching a given bandwidth. These results are meaningful for a compression scheme from picoseconds to femtoseconds.
