Simultaneous compression and amplification of a laser pulse in a glass plate

Abstract

We demonstrated a novel method of simultaneous compression and amplification of a weak laser pulse in a glass plate using cross-phase modulation in conjunction with four-wave optical parametric amplification that was pumped by an intense femtosecond pulse. A proof-of-principle experiment succeeded in smooth broadening of the weak pulse spectrum by a factor of about three and simultaneously amplifying the pulse energy by more than three times. By using chirped mirrors to compensate the dispersion, the weak pulse was compressed from 22.6 fs to 12.6 fs. Furthermore, the output spectrum of seed pulse could be tuned by varying the delay of the intense pump pulse with respect to the weak seed pulse. This method can also be used for simultaneous spectral broadening of several weak beams with different wavelength at the same time. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America