A Self-Diffraction Temporal Filter for Contrast Enhancement in Femtosecond Ultra-High Intensity Laser
Xianzhi Wang, Zhaohua Wang, Y. Wang, Xu Zhang, Jiajun Song, Zhiyi Wei
Abstract
We demonstrated a nonlinear temporal filter based on the self-diffraction (SD) process. Temporal contrast enhancement, angular dispersion and spectrum broadening properties of the SD process are investigated in experiment and simulation. Driven by spectral phase well compensated laser pulses with bandwidth of 28 nm, the filter produced clean pulses with a temporal contrast higher than 10 10 and excellent spatial profile, the spectrum of which was smoothed and broadened to 64 nm. After implementing this filter into a home-made 30 TW Ti:sapphire amplifier, temporal contrast of the amplified pulses was enhanced to 10 10 within the time scale of –400 ps.
Topics & Concepts
FemtosecondMaterials scienceOpticsDiffractionSapphireLaserFilter (signal processing)Self-phase modulationSpatial filterBandwidth (computing)Contrast (vision)OptoelectronicsNonlinear opticsPhysicsTelecommunicationsComputer scienceComputer visionLaser-Matter Interactions and ApplicationsAdvanced Fiber Laser TechnologiesSolid State Laser Technologies