Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 3: Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Q 3.6: Talk
Monday, March 5, 2018, 11:45–12:00, K 0.023
Strong-field-driven dispersive waves in gas-filled hollow-core fibres — •David Novoa1, Felix Köttig1, Francesco Tani1, Marco Cassataro1, Mehmet C. Günendi1, John C. Travers2, and Philip St.J. Russell1 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany — 2Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
The nonlinear parametric process of dispersive wave (DW) emission in gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibres has been largely exploited as a means to efficiently generate tunable ultrafast radiation in the ultraviolet region, with a multitude of applications. The emission of DWs occurs in the normal dispersion regime of the fibre via nonlinear transfer of energy from a self-compressed soliton spectrally located in the anomalous dispersion region, a process that relies crucially on phase matching to be efficient. However, this picture becomes richer when the self-compression dynamics of the pump pulse is taken into account. In particular, peak intensity levels high enough to partially ionize the filling gas can be attained owing to the high damage threshold of these fibres, opening access to in-fibre strong-field dynamics. Thus, it was recently predicted that, in the strong-field regime, the additional transient anomalous dispersion introduced by gas ionization may enable resonant excitation of DWs in the mid-infrared, a forbidden process in the absence of free electrons. Here we report the experimental observation of such strong-field-driven mid-infrared DWs, embedded in a 4.7-octave-wide spectrum that uniquely reaches simultaneously to the vacuum ultraviolet, with 1.7 W of total average power.