Speaker
Mr
Mario Galletti
(Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa)
Description
Coherent light sources in spectral regions which are inaccessible to lasers has been an
important issue for more than five decades. Despite tremendous progress in laser
technology over the last five decades, substantial portions of the optical spectrum from the
ultraviolet (UV) to the infrared (IR) still remain inaccessible to conventional laser sources,
at time scales ranging from continuous to almost single-cycle pulses.
This limitation arises from the limited gain bandwidth of the active medium, which defined
the operating spectral region of the laser. This directly limits the application of such
devices, while also placing a boundary on ultrashort pulse generation, which requires very
broad bandwidths.
In this context, coherent optical sources based on nonlinear conversion, with femtosecond
pulse duration and wide tunability, are rapidly emerging. They are extremely versatile and
of considerable interest for a wide range of scientific and technological applications in
different areas.
Our goal is to investigate the generation of ultrashort laser pulses in the near infrared region
between 900 and 1000 nm, which is of interest for current large-scale laser projects based
on optical parametric chirped pulse amplification. For this, we will design and develop an
innovative sub-20 fs tunable optical parametric oscillators (OPO) optimized at a chosen
central wavelength and a uJ level double stage optical parametric amplification (OPA)
within the new beamline project in Vulcan for betatron imaging.
The OPO systems will be implemented at two existing laser systems: the Laboratory for
Intense Lasers (L2I, IST), with the goal of generating a seed pulse for a new ultrashort
amplifier; and the Vulcan laser system (CLF, RAL), with the goal of generating an off-harmonic
femtosecond probe line to upgrade the system. Their requirements are similar
ensuring that the same technology can be applied, with suitable modification to the spectral
parameters.
Primary author
Mr
Mario Galletti
(Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa)
Co-authors
Prof.
Goncalo Figueira
(Instituto Superior Tecnico)
Dr
Hugo Pires
(Instituto Superior Tecnico)
Dr
Marco Galimberti
(Science and Technology Facilities Council)
Dr
Pedro Oliveira
(Central Laser Facility, RAL)
