Sub-10-fs deep-ultraviolet light source with stable power and spectrum

Abstract

In some applications of ultrafast spectroscopy that employ sub-10-fs pulses, the pulse spectrum and power need to be stable for several tens of minutes. In this study, we generate sub-10-fs deep-ultraviolet (DUV) pulses with such stabilities by chirped-pulse four-wave mixing. A power fluctuation of less than 3% rms was realized by employing stabilization schemes that employ a power stabilizer. The pulses generated in this study have been applied to transient absorption spectroscopy in the DUV with a sub-10-fs time resolution [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 14, 6200 (2012).]. This sub-10-fs DUV source has a similar performance to widely used noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers. (c) 2012 Optical Society of America