Light amplification by seeded Kerr instability

Abstract

Seeding a laser amplifier Amplification of femtosecond laser pulses requires a lasing medium or a nonlinear crystal. The chemical properties of the lasing medium or adherence to momentum conservation rules in the nonlinear crystal constrain the frequency and the bandwidth of the amplified pulses. Vampa et al. seeded modulation instability in a laser crystal pumped with femtosecond near-infrared pulses. This provided a method for the high gain amplification of broadband and short laser pulses up to intensities of 1 terawatt per square centimeter. The method avoids constraints related to doping and phase matching and can be expected to be applied to a wide pool of glasses and crystals. Science , this issue p. 673