Dispersion engineering in nonlinear multipass cells for high-quality pulse compression

Abstract

A dispersion-engineered multipass cell operating in the enhanced frequency regime is presented. Through the use of dispersive cavity mirrors, the nonlinear interaction is reshaped resulting in a smoother broadened spectrum, which yields a significant improvement in compressed pulse quality. The 70 W average power output of an Yb:fiber laser at 50 kHz repetition rate is compressed from 205 fs to 32 fs with more than 96% of the energy contained in the temporal main feature of the pulse. This first, to the best of our knowledge, experimental demonstration of a pulse quality improvement through enhanced frequency chirping in a multipass cell displays the opportunities for dispersion-tailored pulse compression.