Characterizing few-cycle UV resonant dispersive waves through direct field sampling.

We demonstrate compression of few-cycle ultraviolet (UV) resonant dispersive waves (RDWs) generated in a cascaded hollow capillary fiber setup using a Yb laser system. Temporal characterization is performed using both tunneling ionization with a perturbation for the time-domain observation of an electric field (TIPTOE) and self-diffraction frequency-resolved optical gating (SD-FROG), which show good agreement. Through careful dispersion management, we compress the RDW pulse to 6.

Sub-2-cycle post-compression of multi-mJ energy Ti:sapphire laser pulses in a gas-filled multi-pass cell.

We report on the nonlinear temporal post-compression of 7 mJ sub-40 fs pulses from a commercial kHz Ti:sapphire laser down to a record 3.8 fs duration (sub-1.5 optical cycle) in a compact single-stage gas-filled multi-pass cell (MPC), with 60% overall compression efficiency.

Hybrid air-bulk multi-pass cell compressor for high pulse energies with full spatio-temporal characterization.

Multi-pass cell (MPC) compressors have proven to be the method of choice for compression of high average power long-pulse Yb lasers. Yet, generating sub-30 fs pulses at high pulse energy with compact and simple components remains a challenge. This work demonstrates an efficient and cost-effective approach for nonlinear pulse compression at high pulse energy using a hybrid air-bulk MPC.

Survey of spatio-temporal couplings throughout high-power ultrashort lasers.

The investigation of spatio-temporal couplings (STCs) of broadband light beams is becoming a key topic for the optimization as well as applications of ultrashort laser systems. This calls for accurate measurements of STCs. Yet, it is only recently that such complete spatio-temporal or spatio-spectral characterization has become possible, and it has so far mostly been implemented at the output of the laser systems, where experiments take place.