• High Power Laser Science and Engineering
  • Vol. 9, Issue 2, 02000e12 (2021)
Sang-Hoon Nam1, Garima C. Nagar2, Dennis Dempsey2, Ondřej Novák3, Bonggu Shim2, and Kyung-Han Hong1、4、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA02139, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY13902, USA
  • 3HiLASE Centre, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 25241 Dolní Břežany, Czech Republic
  • 4Presently with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA02420, USA
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    DOI: 10.1017/hpl.2021.1 Cite this Article Set citation alerts
    Sang-Hoon Nam, Garima C. Nagar, Dennis Dempsey, Ondřej Novák, Bonggu Shim, Kyung-Han Hong. Multi-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation through high-energy laser filaments in YAG and ZnSe pumped by a 2.4 μm femtosecond Cr:ZnSe laser[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2021, 9(2): 02000e12 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    We present experimental and numerical investigations of high-energy mid-infrared filamentation with multi-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation (SCG), pumped by a 2.4 μm, 250 fs Cr:ZnSe chirped-pulse laser amplifier. The SCG is demonstrated in both anomalous and normal dispersion regimes with YAG and polycrystalline ZnSe, respectively. The formation of stable and robust single filaments along with the visible-to-mid-infrared SCG is obtained with a pump energy of up to 100 μJ in a 6-mm-long YAG medium. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the highest-energy multi-octave-spanning SCG from a laser filament in a solid. On the other hand, the SCG and even-harmonic generation based on random quasi-phase matching (RQPM) are simultaneously observed from the single filaments in a 6-mm-long polycrystalline ZnSe medium with a pump energy of up to 15 μJ. The numerical simulations based on unidirectional pulse propagation equation and RQPM show excellent agreement with the measured multi-octave-spanning SCG and even-harmonic generation. They also reveal the temporal structure of mid-infrared filaments, such as soliton-like self-compression in YAG and pulse broadening in ZnSe.
    $$\begin{align}\frac{\partial \overset{\sim }{E}}{\partial z}&=\frac{i}{2k\left(\omega \right)}{\nabla}_{\perp}^2\overset{\sim }{E}+ iD\overset{\sim }{E}+\frac{i}{2k\left(\omega \right)}\frac{\omega^2}{c^2}\frac{\overset{\sim }{P}{_{\mathrm{NL}}}}{\epsilon_0}\notag\\&\quad-\frac{1}{2k\left(\omega \right)}\frac{\omega }{c}\frac{\overset{\sim }{J}}{\epsilon_0c}-\frac{\overset{\sim }{\alpha}{_{\mathrm{NL}}}}{2},\notag\end{align}$$((1))

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    $$\begin{align}\frac{\partial \rho }{\partial t}=W(I)\left({\rho}_0-\rho \right)+\frac{\sigma_{\mathrm{B}}I}{U}\rho -\frac{\rho }{\tau_{\mathrm{r}}},\end{align}$$((2))

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    $$\begin{align}{P}_2=r(z){\epsilon}_0{d}_2{E}^2(t),\end{align}$$((3))

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    Sang-Hoon Nam, Garima C. Nagar, Dennis Dempsey, Ondřej Novák, Bonggu Shim, Kyung-Han Hong. Multi-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation through high-energy laser filaments in YAG and ZnSe pumped by a 2.4 μm femtosecond Cr:ZnSe laser[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2021, 9(2): 02000e12
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