Tunable deep ultraviolet femtosecond sum frequency laser based on Ba1-xB2-y-zO4SixAlyGaz crystal

Abstract

Tunable coherent deep ultraviolet (DUV) light sources, especially ultrashort pulse DUV lasers have great applications in the fields of time-resolved, material processing, spectroscopy, laser spectroscopy and laser fusion. In the UV region, the best choice of generating the laser pulses in the femtosecond or picosecond regime is the frequency up-conversation technique based on second order nonlinearities. Over the past three decades, quite a lot of nonlinear crystals, such as LiB3O5, βup-BaB2O4, KBe2BO3F2 and Ba1-xB2-y- zO4SixAlyGaz have been developed and employed for generating the femtosecond pulses in the blue, ultraviolet, and even the deep-ultraviolet region. A tunable deep ultraviolet femtosecond laser is experimentally studied based on the new nonlinear crystal Ba1-xB2-y-zO4SixAlyGaz It is a kind of low-temperature phase barium metaborate single crystal belonging to a trigonal system, doped with one or more elements selected from Si, Al and Ga. As an optimized β-BaB2O4 crystal, Ba1-xB2-y-zO4SixAlyGaz completely overcomes the shortcomings of deliquescence compared with β-BaB2O4, and its nonlinear efficiency and optical damage threshold have also been greatly improved. Using two crystals as second harmonic generation is to compensate for the spatial walk-off effect and the light path walk-off due to refraction effect The optical axis of the second Ba1-xB2-y-zO4SixAlyGaz is twice the phase matching angle with respect to the first one. In a femtosecond regime, short pulse provides high efficient frequency conversation due to their high peak powers, but the group velocity mismatch is a cognitive factor to limit conversion efficiency. It is obvious that after the frequency doubling, the second harmonic pulse and fundamental pulse separate from each other. The second harmonic pulse lags behind the fundamental pulse as they propagate through the crystal and the second harmonic pulse is broadened into a longer pulse duration than the fundamental pulse The method to compensate for the group velocity mismatch is to adjust the path length between the fundamental and second harmonic pulse by means of time delay line. It consists of beam splitters and mirrors. Tunable deep ultraviolet pulse within a wavelength range from 192.5 to 210 nm is produced, with a maximum average power of 5.8 mW, under a 2.78 W fundamental power. The average power of second harmonic, third harmonic and fourth harmonic are 1.28 W, 194 mW and 5.8 mW at the fundamental wavelength of 800 nm, corresponding to conversion efficiencies of 46.14%, 15.16% and 3% from the previous stage, respectively. The duration of the third harmonic pulse is 640.4 fs at 266.7 nm as measured by the cross-correlation technique.