Abstract

A general non-collinear geometric condition for broadband femtosecond parametric amplification (known as tangential phase-matching in the nanosecond regime) has recently been exploited to produce 13 fs pulses in the visible from an optica! parametric oscillator [1] and less than 11 fs from a single-stage optical parametric amplifier [2]. These results will be compared to detailed numerical simulations of the parametric process and it will be shown that pulse duration is limited by third- and higher order dispersion This opens up the possibility for the generation of significantly sub-10 fs pulses in the visible by use of mirror dispersion controlled systems.

© 1998 IEEE