High Average Power Near-Infrared Few-Cycle Lasers (Laser Photonics Rev. 11(4)/2017)

J Rothhardt, S Hädrich, JC Delagnes, E Cormier, J Limpert

Index: 10.1002/lpor.201770041

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Abstract

Few-cycle laser technology has come of age. Due to the recent advances in Yb-based solid state laser technology, femtosecond laser pulses are nowadays available at much higher average power and repetition rate. Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification and nonlinear pulse compression are two complementary methods to transfer the high average power of Yb-based femtosecond lasers to few-cycle pulses. Recent advances made 200 W average power few-cycle lasers possible and power scaling beyond 1 kW appears feasible. These laser systems already enabled first exciting applications such as attosecond pulse generation, strong-field ionization and coincidence spectroscopy. In the future, many more applications in science and technology will benefit from this next generation few-cycle lasers.