Abstract

We report efficient generation of tunable femtosecond pulses in the near IR using a two stage, white-light seeded, collinear, femtosecond optical parametric amplifier (OPA). The OPA, based on $\mathrm{Bi}{\mathrm{B}}_3{\mathrm{O}}_6$ crystal in both stages and pumped at $807\mathrm{nm}$ by a $1\mathrm{kHz}$ Ti:sapphire laser amplifier, provides sub-$30\mathrm{fs}$ signal pulses after compression with energies exceeding $200\mu \mathrm{J}$, which corresponds to fivefold pulse shortening and $\sim 30\%$ internal conversion efficiency in the second stage considering $150\mathrm{fs}$ pump pulses with $1.5\mathrm{mJ}$ energy. The corresponding idler pulses with more than $100\mu \mathrm{J}$ have sub-$60\mathrm{fs}$ duration without compression. The first stage alone is capable of producing sub-$20\mathrm{fs}$ pulses near $1400\mathrm{nm}$ at the microjoule level without using any compression.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

Broadly tunable, sub-30 fs near-infrared pulses from an optical parametric amplifier based on BiB₃O₆

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