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High Power Short Pulse Laser Systems in the UV: A powerful tool for the generation of high intensities and nano-scale structures

Lecturer: Dr. József Békési, Laser-Laboratorium Göttingen, Germany

Date: August 18, 2009
Time: 8:30-12:00 (4 hours)
Room: TS3110

Credits: Exam and accreditation of the course will be arranged in case there is an interest

Further information: Krisztian Kordas, lapy(at)ee.oulu.fi

Abstract

In the last years there has been an increasing interest in short pulse laser sources for different applications (material processing, plasma experiments, high harmonics generation etc.). The most often used systems are Ti:Sa based solid-state lasers operating in the IR around 800 nm. Based on the well-developed pulse shortening methods and Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) techniques, compact and reliable solid-state sources can be built with high peak powers at this wavelength. However, for many applications the most important parameters are the maximum focused intensity or the highest optical resolution, which both scales with the wavelength, thus favoring UV sources. In the UV region there is no effective way to generate ultra short pulses, therefore the typical way to reach short optical pulses is frequency up-conversion and subsequent amplification of short laser pulses generated in solid-state (IR) or dye (VIS) laser systems. The frequency converted beam can then be amplified in an excimer module representing the highest-gain device in the UV to date. The frequency up-conversion has the advantage that because of its nonlinear response it cleans up residual temporal tails of the pulse originating from incomplete compression of the temporally stretched pulses during the CPA process. As a result, the main limitation for the contrast (which is the intensity ratio of the short pulse and the ASE) is the amplified spontaneous emission. Such highly intensive pulses can be effectively used in numerous applications, e.g. ultrafast spectroscopy, generation of few cycle ultra-short pulses, generation of extremely high intensities, or material processing of practically all kind of materials on the sub-micrometer scale.

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