White Light Generation with 2-μm Femtosecond Pulses from a Tm:YAP Regenerative Amplifier

Abstract

We present supercontinuum generation (SCG) in a bulk medium and polarization-maintaining ZrF4-BaF2- LaF3-AlF3-NaF fiber (PM-ZBLAN) with 2 μm femtosecond pulses from a regenerative amplifier solely based on Tm:YAP. The amplifier is capable of generating approximately 360 fs, millijoule pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate. The repetition rate of the amplifier system can easily be changed by the Pockels cell up to 10 kHz. Focusing 15 μJ of the amplified signal under 10 kHz operation can generate supercontinuum (SC) in bulk while 0.5 μJ pulse energy of the output is enough to achieve SC that spreads from visible to mid-infrared in a 50 cm long PM-ZBLAN fiber. The mid-infrared part of each SC is characterized using sum-frequency generation cross-correlation frequency resolved optical gating (SFG-XFROG).