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The pulse contrast of state-of-the-art petawatt lasers is limited by coherent noise. This paper reports on a new family of noise, termed nonlinear beat noise, which is generated by the nonlinear mixing of two kinds of coherent noise in optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). We theoretically study the various nonlinear beat noises and reveal their intensity evolutions in an OPCPA amplifier. The results suggest that nonlinear beat noise will be destructive to the future hundred-petawatt lasers.

The spectroscopic characteristics, continuous-wave (CW) and mode-locking laser performances of Tm,Y:CaF

Quasi-parametric chirped pulse amplification (QPCPA) is a new scheme that enables the amplification of chirped signal pulses without back conversion by depleting the idler pulses. In this paper, we present a numerical study on the bandwidth, efficiency, and robustness of QPCPA. Self-locked phase among the interacting waves is found to be the underlying mechanism for the suppression of back conversion, which allows signal efficiency approaching to the quantum limit even under the phase-mismatch condition, and thus greatly increases the phase-mismatch tolerance of QPCPA. We demonstrate that QPCPA can break through the trade-off between the efficiency and bandwidth encountered in conventional optical parametric amplification, hence supporting highly efficient amplification of few-cycle pulses.

We experimentally demonstrated a diode-pumped sub-50 fs Yb,Na:CNGG disordered crystal laser. Pumped by a 980 nm distributed Bragg-reflector tapered diode laser and passively mode-locked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), soliton pulses as short as 62 fs and 45 fs were obtained without and with external compression, respectively. The ultrashort pulses had a repetition rate of ~104 MHz at the central wavelength of 1061 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of sub-50 fs pulses from the Yb3+-doped CNGG type disordered crystal lasers.

Optical parametric phase (OPP), inherently induced in optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA), will significantly degrade pulse compression in the few-cycle pulse regime. While OPP is a well-known nonlinear phenomenon, its nonlinearity origin has remained unclear in physics. Here, we present a systematic theoretical investigation on OPP and demonstrate that OPP originates from the cascaded quadratic nonlinearity in a broadband OPCPA with intrinsic phase-mismatch. Because the intrinsic phase-mismatch is frequency dependent, OPP manifests itself as a nonlinear spectral phase. We show that OPP increases with the parametric gain, approaches to half the intrinsic phase-mismatch in the high-gain limit, and thus directly links with the crystal dispersion. We also find that the effect of OPP in the spatial domain is typically negligible, which makes the OPP compensation necessary only in the spectral domain. The results presented in this paper are of importance to guide the design of few-cycle intense OPCPA systems.

The mode-locked fluoride fiber laser (MLFFL) is an exciting platform for directly generating ultrashort pulses in the mid-infrared (mid-IR). However, owing to difficulty in managing the dispersion in fluoride fiber lasers, MLFFLs are restricted to the soliton regime, hindering pulse-energy scaling. We overcame the problem of dispersion management by utilizing the huge normal dispersion generated near the absorption edge of an infrared-bandgap semiconductor and promoted MLFFL from soliton to breathing-pulse mode-locking. In the breathing-pulse regime, the accumulated nonlinear phase shift can be significantly reduced in the cavity, and the pulse-energy-limitation effect is mitigated. The breathing-pulse MLFFL directly produced a pulse energy of 9.3 nJ and pulse duration of 215 fs, with a record peak power of 43.3 kW at 2.8 μm. Our work paves the way for the pulse-energy and peak-power scaling of mid-IR fluoride fiber lasers, enabling a wide range of applications.

Ultrafast laser sources operating in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region, which contains the characteristic fingerprint spectra of many important molecules and transparent windows of atmosphere, are of significant importance in a variety of applications. Over the past decade, a significant progress has been made in the development of inexpensive, compact, high-efficiency mid-IR ultrafast mode-locked lasers in the picosecond and femtosecond domains that cover the 2.0 μm–3.5 μm spectral region. These achievements open new opportunities for applications in areas such as molecular spectroscopy, frequency metrology, material processing, and medical diagnostics and treatment. In this review, starting with the introduction of mid-IR mode-locking techniques, we mainly summarize and review the recent progress of mid-IR mode-locked laser sources, including Tm3+-, Ho3+-, and Tm3+/Ho3+-doped all-solid-state and fiber lasers for the 2.0 μm spectral region, Cr2+:ZnSe and Cr2+:ZnS lasers for the 2.4 μm region, and Er3+-, Ho3+/Pr3+-, and Dy3+-doped fluoride fiber lasers for the 2.8 μm–3.5 μm region. Then, some emerging and representative applications of mid-IR ultrafast mode-locked laser sources are presented and illustrated. Finally, outlooks and challenges for future development of ultrafast mid-IR laser sources are discussed and analyzed. The development of ultrafast mid-IR laser sources, together with the ongoing progress in related application technologies, will create new avenues of research and expand unexplored applications in scientific research, industry, and other fields. ASTAR (Agency for Sci., Tech. and Research, S’pore) Published version

Separating lights into different paths according to the polarization states while keeping their respective path’s polarizations with high purification is keen for polarization multiplex in optical communications. Metallic nanowire gratings with multi-slits in a period are proposed to achieve polarized beam splitters (PBSs) in reflection and diffraction. The setting of multi-slits largely reduces the reflection of photons with a transverse magnetific field via the plasmonic waveguiding effect, which leads to highly polarized output lights with extinction ratio larger than 20 dB in each channel. The proposed reflection/diffraction PBSs enrich the approaches to control the polarization states with the advantages of wide incident angles and flexible beam splitting angles.

We studied the optical scattering noise, measurement artifacts, and their suppression in single-shot measurements of prepulse contrast. The measurement noise due to air scattering and the two kinds of measurement artifacts resulting from multiple reflections of the generated correlation signal and correlation between the pulse under test and the internally reflected sampling pulse were experimentally explored. The scattering noise and measurement artifacts significantly degrade the measurement fidelity. We demonstrate the clean measurement of prepulse contrast in a single-shot cross-correlator by attenuating the main peak of the correlation beam with a dot mirror and designing the correlating process based on a periodically-poled lithium niobate crystal embedded in an unpoled wafer. The standard time-scanning measurements of pulse contrast are also performed to confirm the experimental results of our single-shot measurement.

Recent progress in strong-field physics has stimulated the quest for intense mid-infrared ultrashort light sources. Optical parametric amplification (OPA) is one promising method to build up such sources, however, its development significantly relies on the availability of suitable nonlinear crystals. Here, we introduce a positive uniaxial crystal Lasub3/subGasub5.5/subNbsub0.5/subOsub14/sub(LGN), which exhibits a favorable set of optical properties for the application in a mid-IR OPA. We theoretically evaluate the performance of LGN as the nonlinear crystal of a mid-infrared OPA, with an emphasis on the bandwidth characteristic. We find that this crystal can support broadband amplifications across its entire mid-infrared transparent region up to 6 μm, outperforming other commonly-used mid-infrared crystals in terms of gain bandwidth. Few-cycle mid-infrared pulses at various wavelengths can be generated from the LGN-based optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifiers.

Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) has been demonstrated to be a promising approach for pushing femtosecond pulses towards ultra-high peak powers. However, the future success of OPCPA strongly relies on the ability to manipulate its phase-matching (PM) configuration. When a high average power pump laser is involved, the thermal effects in nonlinear crystals induce phase-mismatch distortions that pose an inherent limitation on the conversion efficiency. Here, we demonstrate that the noncollinear configuration previously adopted for wavelength-insensitive PM can be employed for temperature-insensitive PM when the noncollinear angle is properly reset. Simultaneous temperature- and wavelength-insensitive PM is realized for the first time by imposing such a temperature-insensitive noncollinear configuration with an angularly dispersed seed signal. Based on the lithium triborate crystal, the proposed noncollinear achromatic PM has a thermal acceptance 6 times larger than that of the conventional wavelength-insensitive noncollinear PM and has a sufficient spectral acceptance to support pulse durations of ~20 fs at 800 nm. These achievements open new possibilities for generating ultra-high peak power lasers with high average power.

A two-stage 2.2 μm OPCPA system is built with amplified chirped-pulse energy of 5 J. After compression, 1.8 J, 82 fs mid-IR pulses will be potentially obtained, providing an important driving source for strong-field physics. Article not available.

We investigate pulse cleaning behaviors in short-pulse-pumped optical parametric amplifiers (OPA). We theoretically study the contrast enhancement of amplified signal pulse and generated idler pulse, and reveal their dependence on the parametric gain in both the regimes of small signal and saturated amplifications. The signal contrast enhancement is nearly equal to the parametric gain, while the idler contrast is approximately equal to the product of the contrasts of the pump and signal pulses in a low gain OPA and increases with the gain. The effects of group-velocity mismatch and group-velocity dispersion on the contrast enhancement are also investigated. The results presented in this paper are of value for pulse cleaning.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel second-harmonic-generation (SHG) scheme capable of supporting temperature-insensitive phase-matching (PM) at various laser wavelengths. This versatile temperature-insensitive PM is designed by using two cascaded crystals with opposite signs of temperature derivation of phase-mismatch, in which the temperature-induced phase-mismatch in the first crystal is well compensated in the second crystal. Two application examples are studied at the typical wavelengths of ~ 1.0 and 1.5 μm, respectively. The proof-of-principle experiment, using two crystals of LiB3O5 (LBO) and KH2PO4 (KDP), demonstrates that the temperature-acceptance of PM can be 2 – 3 times larger than that of using a traditional single crystal. The proposed two-crystal design may provide a promising route to high-average-power SHG at various laser wavelengths.

In past years, rare-earth-doped fluoride fiber lasers (FFLs) have developed rapidly in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region. However, due to the lack of fiber optic devices and challenge of fluoride fiber splicing, most mid-IR FFLs have been demonstrated with free-space optic elements, limiting the advantages of all-fiber lasers for flexible delivery, stability, and compactness. Here, we report, to the best of our knowledge, the first pulsed all-fiber FFL in the mid-IR region. By taking advantage of the integration of black phosphorus flake, stable Q-switched and mode-locked pulses were obtained at 2.8 μm wavelength. We believe that this all-fiber design will promote the application of pulsed FFL in the mid-IR region.

In this paper, precise synchronization of the femtosecond and picosecond laser regenerative amplifiers with different wavelengths and independent seed oscillators was achieved using the electronic phase-locked loop and global clock techniques. The root-mean-square relative timing jitter of the two regenerative amplifiers was measured as 0.66 ps using a modified statistical method based on the error propagation relation between the independent variables and the conventional optical cross-correlation technique. The results suggest that this method is more accurate and requires simple optical setups for low-pulse repetition rate lasers.

Slow and fast light are ubiquitous in optical amplifiers. In this Letter, we show for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that optical parametric amplification (OPA) in chirped quasi-phase-matching structures can act as a platform for group-velocity control in the femtosecond regime. The resonant cascaded nonlinear phase underlies the group-velocity control, which manifests an unusual effect that both slow and fast light can be achieved under the normal condition of signal amplification. As numerically demonstrated in the OPA based on the lithium niobate crystal, the signal and idler pulse can be significantly delayed in time comparable to the signal duration and can also keep high fidelity for durations down to 100 fs until the crystal dispersion becomes effective. The broad bandwidth, large group delay, and direct compatibility with integrated optics will make the proposed platform attractive to both fundamental research and applied science.

In this Letter, we study short-wavelength conical refraction (CR) via sum-frequency generation (SFG) in the femtosecond regime, a previously unaddressed topic. Based on biaxial crystal of KGd(WO4)2 whose dispersion of optical-axis orientation is negligible in near-IR, conventional femtosecond lasers at 800 and 1054 nm are transformed into CR beams, respectively. Femtosecond CR beams at 454 nm are generated via SFG with the near-IR CR beams. While the generated sum-frequency ring is typically incomplete, a full-ring distribution can be achieved by adopting Type-II SFG with a large phase mismatch. We find that the femtosecond sum-frequency ring under various phase-matching conditions evolves as typical CR beams.

Efficient frequency-tripling of phase-modulated broadband Nd:glass laser pulses is of interest to inertial confinement fusion. We report and theoretically study an efficient frequency-tripling scheme for 351 nm broadband pulses generation by use of broadband and narrowband Nd:glass lasers. Based on the conventional two-crystal doubling and tripling baseline configuration, employing an additional narrowband laser can increase the bandwidth acceptance of Nd:glass up to 320 GHz, which is 3.5 times larger than that of using the conventional configuration. The proposed scheme may also dramatically reduce the conversion of amplitude modulation from the frequency modulation. The efficiency sensitivities on both the fundamental intensity and the doubler orientation are discussed for practical applications.

We have experimentally demonstrated a diode-pumped passively mode-locked Nd:CLNGG-CNGG hybrid laser for the first time. By employing Nd:CLNGG and Nd:CNGG disordered crystals together as laser gain media, the mode-locked laser could generate much shorter pulses. With a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker, the laser emitted stable mode-locked pulses with a pulse width of 534 fs, a repetition rate of 88 MHz, and an average output power of 60 mW. To our best knowledge, this is the shortest pulse generated from SESAM mode-locked Nd-doped crystal lasers.

We have experimentally demonstrated a diode-pumped passively mode-locked Nd:CaNb2O6 laser for the first time to our best knowledge. With a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a passive mode locker, the laser generated stable mode-locked pulses with pulse duration of 17.3 ps and repetition rate of 88.4 MHz. With a singe-emitter laser diode pumping, the maximum average output power of the mode-locked laser was 0.843 W, with a slope efficiency of 23%. The experimental results show the Nd:CaNb2O6 crystal is a promising laser gain medium for picosecond pulse generation.

With the proposal of dual-wavelength pumping (DWP) scheme, DWP Er:ZBLAN fiber lasers at 3.5 μm have become a fascinating area of research. However, limited by the absence of suitable saturable absorber, passively Q-switched and mode-locked fiber lasers have not been realized in this spectral region. Based on the layer-dependent bandgap and excellent photoelectric characteristics of black phosphorus (BP), BP is a promising candidate for saturable absorber near 3.5 μm. Here, we fabricated a 3.5-μm saturable absorber mirror (SAM) by transferring BP flakes onto a Au-coated mirror. With the as-prepared BP SAM, we realized Q-switching and mode-locking operations in the DWP Er:ZBLAN fiber lasers at 3.5 μm. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to achieve passively Q-switched and mode-locked pulses in 3.5 μm spectral region. The research results will not only promote the development of 3.5-μm pulsed fiber lasers but also open the photonics application of two-dimensional materials in this spectral region.

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) provides a promising route for generating vortex beams of both short wavelength and large topological charge. Here we theoretically investigate the efficiency optimization and beam characteristics of focused vortex-beam SHG. Owing to the increasing beam divergence, vortex beams have distinct features in SHG optimization compared with a Gaussian beam. We show that, under the noncritical phase-matching condition, the Boyd and Kleinman prediction of the optimal focusing parameter for Gaussian-beam SHG remains valid for vortex-beam SHG. However, under the critical phase-matching condition, which is sensitive to the beam divergence, the Boyd and Kleinman prediction is no longer valid. In contrast, the optimal focusing parameter for maximizing the SHG efficiency strongly depends on the vortex order. We also investigate the effects of focusing and phase-matching conditions on the second-harmonic beam characteristics.

High-power ultrafast fiber lasers operating at the 2 μm wavelength are extremely desirable for material processing, laser surgery, and nonlinear optics. Here we fabricated large-core (LC) double-cladding Tm-doped silica fiber via the sol-gel method. The sol-gel-fabricated Tm-doped silica (SGTS) fiber had a large core diameter of 30 μm with a high refractive index homogeneity (Δn=2×10−4). With the newly developed LC SGTS fiber as the gain fiber, high-power mode-locking was realized. By using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker, the LC SGTS fiber oscillator generated mode-locked pulses with an average output power as high as 1.0 W and a pulse duration of 23.9 ps at the wavelength of 1955.0 nm. Our research results show that the self-developed LC Tm-doped silica fiber via the sol-gel method is a promising gain fiber for generating high-power ultrafast lasers in the 2 μm spectral region.

Combining the configurations of collinear and small-angle noncollinear phase-matching, a mid-infrared (MIR) femtosecond optical parametric amplifier (OPA) with extended tunability is proposed and demonstrated. A tuning range from 2.0 µm to 4.7 µm is demonstrated by a two-stage LiNbO3-based femtosecond OPA, which well exceeds the typical tuning range reported so far. MIR femtosecond pulses with energy up to 30 µJ are obtained.

Beam combining of fiber array with hexagonal ring distribution has been studied in detail. The theoretical analysis and numerical calculation results are given to illustrate the propagation properties of the resulting beam through free space. A comparison between the coherent and the incoherent case shows that high peak irradiance and good beam quality for coherent combining can be obtained in the far field. The effects of phase errors and beam quality M 2 factor are also studied. Results indicate that the element numbers should be increased to achieve high power and the space between adjacent elements should be reduced to maintain a good beam quality. This is basically the same for both coherent and incoherent beam combining.

We report on a compact high-power passively mode-locked Nd:LuVO4 laser by use of semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The laser generated clean CW mode-locked pulses with an average output power of 8.6 W, a repetition rate of 144 MHz, and a pulse duration of 13.2 ps. By employing a three-mirror cavity scheme, the laser setup has only a footprint size of 70×30 cm2, which can be packaged to a portable laser system for convenient applications.

Passively cw mode-locked laser operation of Yb-doped NaY(WO4)2 (Yb:NaYW) crystal was demonstrated with an average power of 400 mW. This is the highest power achieved from the mode-locked Yb:NaYW laser to our knowledge. The laser was end-pumped by a high power fiber pigtailed laser diode bar and the mode-locking was enabled by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). The laser pulse duration was 1.1 ps, centered at the wavelength of 1019.7 nm with a bandwidth of 1.6 nm, and nearly transform-limited.

Cascaded nonlinearity based soliton pulse compression in the process of femtosecond difference frequency generation is studied theoretically. A set of simplified coupled wave equations under the conditions of large phase mismatch and matched group velocities is obtained, which reveals the physical mechanism of soliton compression in this process. Numerical simulations demonstrate that in the presence of group velocity dispersion and equivalent cross phase modulation, both the pump and the signal pulses can be compressed with a high compression ratio.

In this paper, we studied efficient second-harmonic generation (SHG) of femtosecond pulses in both phase- and group-velocity-matched structures. Obtained results show that phase matching becomes more critical under conditions required for high levels of conversion efficiency. And the imperfect phase mismatch caused by mismatched group-velocity dispersion (GVD) will limit conversion efficiency as well as bandwidth of generated second-harmonic (SH) pulses. The spectral characteristics of the generated SH pulses and its conversion efficiency in the strong pump regime are investigated in detail. The acceptance bandwidth of nonlinear crystal in the high-efficiency SHG is redefined in the paper, and the definition is much closer to the practical application of design.

We report a novel frequency tripler for efficient conversion of broadband high-power laser pulses at 1 µm. The deuteration level can be used as a degree of freedom to alter the phase-matching wavelength of a partially deuterated KDP crystal. It is shown that a segmented partially deuterated KDP crystal with discrete values of deuteration is capable of enhancing the acceptance bandwidth of frequency tripling. A five-segment design is presented, which is applicable to the efficient frequency tripling of uncompressed chirped pulses with a bandwidth of ~4 nm, and hence suitable for a Nd:glass petawatt laser system. The tolerances on the design parameters are also evaluated.

We show numerically that when a soliton circulating in the laser cavity experiences dynamical bifurcations, extra sets of sidebands appear in the soliton spectrum. The new sidebands have clearly different characteristics to those of the conventional soliton sidebands, indicating that there exists a new mechanism of sideband generation in the lasers.

We have experimentally studied the passive Q-switching performance of a Nd:YAG ceramic laser with GaAs saturable absorbers. It was found that, depending on the laser intensity in the wafer, the Q-switched pulses obtained could have very different pulse width and pulse energy. The shortest pulse obtained has 4.7 ns pulse width, 6.25 µJ pulse energy and 1.33 kW peak power. Furthermore we show that, by adding a slit in the cavity, the Q-switched pulse stability could be significantly improved.

In this paper, the multi-stage compression of picosecond pulses by cascaded quadratic nonlinearity is studied theoretically, and the dependence of pulse compression on phase-mismatch, laser intensity, and crystal characteristics has been discussed in detail. We demonstrate that the multi-stage pulse compression is much more efficient than the single-stage with a same total crystal length. Pulses as short as ∼150 fs can be generated by compressing 30-ps initial pulses in a two-stage configuration under the realistic crystal and laser conditions, and shorter pulses of ∼30 fs may be obtained by three-stage compression. Pulse compression performances with BiBO and BBO crystals are compared and discussed finally.

A mid-infrared saturable absorber mirror is successfully fabricated by transferring the mechanically exfoliated black phosphorus onto the gold-coated mirror. With the as-prepared black phosphorus saturable absorber mirror, a continuous-wave passively mode-locked Er:ZBLAN fiber laser is demonstrated at the wavelength of 2.8 μm, which delivers a maximum average output power of 613 mW, a repetition rate of 24 MHz, and a pulse duration of 42 ps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a black phosphorus mode-locked laser at 2.8 μm wavelength has been demonstrated. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of black phosphorus flake as a new two-dimensional material for application in mid-infrared ultrafast photonics.

Stable 30 fs pulses centered at 1068 nm (less than 10 optical cycles) are demonstrated in a diode pumped Yb:CaYAlO4 laser by using high-quality chemical vapor deposited monolayer graphene as the saturable absorber. The mode locked 8.43 optical-cycle pulses have a spectral bandwidth of ~ 50 nm and a pulse repetition frequency of ~ 113.5 MHz. To our knowledge, this is the shortest pulse ever reported for graphene mode-locked lasers and mode-locked Yb-doped bulk lasers. Our experimental results demonstrate that graphene mode locking is a very promising practical technique to generate few-cycle optical pulses directly from a laser oscillator., 15 pages,6 figures

Black phosphorus, a newly emerged two-dimensional material, has attracted wide attention as novel photonic material. Here, multi-layer black phosphorus is successfully fabricated by liquid phase exfoliation method. By employing black phosphorus as saturable absorber, we demonstrate a passively Q-switched Er-doped ZBLAN fiber laser at the wavelength of 2.8 {\mu}m. The modulation depth and saturation fluence of the black phosphorus saturable absorber are measured to be 15% and 9 {\mu}J/cm2, respectively. The Q-switched fiber laser delivers a maximum average power of 485 mW with corresponding pulse energy of 7.7 {\mu}J and pulse width of 1.18 {\mu}s at repetition rate of 63 kHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to demonstrate that black phosphorus can realize Q-switching of 2.8-{\mu}m fiber laser. Our research results show that black phosphorus is a promising saturable absorber for mid-infrared pulsed lasers.

Passively mode-locked lasers provide a convenient way to generate ultrafast laser pulses with high peak power. In this report, we gave introduction of progress of passively mode-locked mid-infrared solid-state lasers at 2 μm region in our laboratory.

We have accomplished designing of a 100-TW level mid-infrared laser based on two-stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) scheme. At present, we have experimentally demonstrated 120-GW mid-infrared pulse generation with single-stage OPCPA.

We experimentally demonstrated dual-wavelength synchronous operation of a high-power passively mode-locked 2-μm Tm:CaYAlO4 (Tm:CYA) disordered crystal laser with semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as mode locker. The mode-locked laser emitted an average output power as high as 830 mW with pulse duration of 35.3 ps and repetition rate of 145.4 MHz. The mode-locking dual wavelengths were centered at 1958.9 nm and 1960.6 nm, respectively. Autocorrelation trace clearly shows beating pulses with pulse width of 3.5 ps and repetition rate of 0.13 THz.

The phase-matching condition in a fiber is discussed. A balance among the different orders of fiber dispersion can be found to achieve a widely tuning modulation instability gain for pumping around the normal dispersion regime. Three coupled nonlinear wave equations are used to simulate the femtosecond fiber optical parametric oscillator. The numerical results show that, through appropriate choice of dispersion, femtosecond pulses with a 180-nm tunable range can be generated when pump wavelength near a fiber’s zero-dispersion wavelength is tuned only 7 nm. Further tuning is limited by the walk-off between the pump and the signal pulses.

In this paper we theoretically study second-harmonic generation (SHG) of weak femtosecond pulses at the wavelength with vanished group-velocity mismatch (GVM) where group-velocity dispersion (GVD) plays a major role. While the principles behind the modelling are general, the simulations of SHG for Nd:glass laser pulses using the actual dispersion of a partially deuterated KDP are included. We demonstrate that both the proper pre-chirping of the pump pulse and optimization of the phase-matching condition may improve the conversion efficiency. The defined optimum dispersing parameter is calculated for several typical cases, and the results are compared with those obtained by Boyd and Kleinman in the space domain. The dependence of the SH spectrum on the phase-matching condition, GVDs and crystal length are evaluated respectively, and shows that optimum phase matching may enhance while strong GVDs and/or long crystal length narrow the SH bandwidth.

Thin films of beta barium borate have been prepared by liquid phase epitaxy on Sr2+-doped α-BaB2O4 (α-BBO, the high temperature phase of barium borate) (001) and (110) substrates. The results of X-ray diffraction indicate that the films show highly (00l) preferred orientation on (001)-oriented substrates while the films grown on (110) substrates are textured with (140) orientation. The crystallinity of these films was found to depend on growth temperature, rotation rate, dip time and orientation of substrate. Growth conditions were optimized to grow films with (00l) orientation on (001) substrates reproducibly. The films show second harmonic generation of 400 nm light upon irradiation with 800 nm Ti: Sapphire femtosecond laser light.

In this paper we theoretically study ultrafast four-wave mixing (FWM) in fibre optical parametric amplifiers. The nonlinear coupled-amplitude equations are applied to discuss the contributions of self-phase modulation, cross-phase modulation, FWM, temporal walk-off, group-velocity dispersion and third-order dispersion in a degenerate FWM process. In the case of nondispersive FWM, the pulse duration remains nearly unchanged while the shape is distorted and the spectrum exhibits asymmetric broadening in the region where the pump, signal and idler pulses are temporally overlapped. In the case of dispersive FWM, the combined effect of dispersion and nonlinearity leads to both temporal and spectral changes in all the propagation length.

We demonstrate that leaky modes can be observed in asymmetrical photonic crystal slabs on low-index and high-index substrates. The reflective spectra are studied using the scattering-matrix method, and bands of the leaky modes are obtained via the surface-coupling technique. Caused by the lack of the vertical translational symmetry, the transverse electric (TE)-polarized incidence is reflected into light containing a transverse magnetic (TM) component when the incident plane does not possess mirror symmetry, although the conversion efficiency is weak. This phenomenon, i.e. polarization conversion, is studied in detail.