Intense self-compressed, self-phase-stabilized few-cycle pulses at 2 μm from an optical filament

• DOI: 10.1364/ol.32.000868
• Publication Date: 2007-03-05T22:27:34Z
• Authors: C. P. Hauri; R. B. Lopez-Martens; C. I. Blaga; K. D. Schultz; J. Cryan; R. Chirla; P. Colosimo; G. Doumy; A. M. March; C. Roedig; E. Sistrunk; J. Tate; J. Wheeler; L. F. DiMauro; E. P. Power
• Keywords: [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-OPTICS]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Optics [physics.optics]; 0103 physical sciences; 530; 01 natural sciences; 510

We report the compression of intense, carrier-envelope phase stable mid-IR pulses down to few-cycle duration using an optical filament. A filament in xenon gas is formed by using self-phase stabilized 330 microJ 55 fs pulses at 2 microm produced via difference-frequency generation in a Ti:sapphire-pumped optical parametric amplifier. The ultrabroadband 2 microm carrier-wavelength output is self-compressed below 3 optical cycles and has a 270 microJ pulse energy. The self-locked phase offset of the 2 microm difference-frequency field is preserved after filamentation. This is to our knowledge the first experimental realization of pulse compression in optical filaments at mid-IR wavelengths (lambda>0.8 microm).