Miscellaneous publications

We present a coherently-combined ultrafast fiber laser system consisting of four amplifier channels delivering 3.5 kW average power at 80 MHz repetition rate with a pulse duration of 430 fs FWHM and a close-to-diffraction-limited beam quality with an M-2 < 1.2. The system incorporates a fully automated self-adjustment of the beam combination, allowing for a quasi-turn-key operation of the system. At the date of publication, this system delivers the highest average power reported from an ultrafast laser.

We present a laser amplifier based on coherent combination of 16 channels from a single multicore fiber employing multi-channel components for beam splitting, combination and temporal phasing. Stretched femtosecond pulses (250 fs transform-limit) were combined with an efficiency of 80% at up to 205 W average power.

Imaging of biological specimen is one of the most important tools to investigate structures and functionalities in organic components. Improving the resolution of images into the nanometer range call for short wavelengths light sources and large aperture optics. Subsequently, the use of extreme ultraviolet light in the range of 2 nm to 5 nm provides high contrast and high resolution imaging, if it is combined with lensless imaging techniques. We describe important parameters for high resolution lensless imaging of biological samples and specify the required light source properties. To overcome radiation based damage of biological specimen, we discuss the concept of ghost imaging and describe a possible setup towards biological imaging in the extreme ultraviolet range.

We present the most recent results of ultrafast fiber-laser driven generation of broadband THz radiation based on two-color gas-plasma. The experiment shows how energetic fiber-lasers can improve on an application today mainly dominated by Ti:sapphire lasers and power-scalability of this kind of THz sources is discussed. With a high-power driving laser THz radiation with more than 4 mW of average power is generated. This is the highest average power using this scheme so far.

We evaluated the capabilities of an intense ultrafast high-harmonic seeded soft X-ray laser at 32.8 nm wavelength regarding single-shot lensless imaging and ptychography. Additionally the wave front at the exit of the laser plasma amplifier is monitored in amplitude and phase using high resolution ptychography and backpropagation techniques.Characterizing the laser plasma amplifier performance depending on the arrival time of the seed pulse with respect to pump pulses provides insight into the light plasma interaction in the soft X-ray range.

Frequency combs are an enabling technology for metrology and spectroscopic applications in fundamental and life sciences. While frequency combs in the 1 lam regime, produced from Yb-based systems have already exceeded the 100 W - level, high power coverage of the interesting mid-infrared wavelength range remains yet to be demonstrated. Tm- and Ho-doped laser systems have recently shown operation at high average power levels in the 2 lam wavelength regime. However, frequency combs in this wavelength range have not exceeded the 5 W-average power level. In this work, we present a high power frequency comb, delivered by a Tm-doped chirped-pulse amplifier with subsequent nonlinear pulse compression. With an integrated phase noise of <320 mrad, low relative intensity noise of <0.5% and an average power of 60 W at 100 MHz repetition rate (and <30 fs FWHM pulse duration), this system demonstrates high stability and broad spectral coverage at an unrivalled average power level in this wavelength regime. Therefore, this laser will enable metrology and spectroscopy with unprecedented sensitivity and acquisition time. It is our ongoing effort to extend the spectral coverage of this system through the utilization of parametric frequency conversion into the mid-IR, thus ultimately enabling high power fingerprint spectroscopy in the entire molecular fingerprint region (2 - 20 mu m).

In this contribution, we present the newest results of the recently introduced pulse-energy-scaling technique electrooptically controlled divided-pulse amplification (EDPA) and its implementation in a high-power fiber laser system based on coherent combination. In this experiment, a burst of 8 stretched fs-pulses is amplified in two high-power fiber amplifier channels followed by coherent combination into a single pulse. Afterwards, the signal is compressed to a FWHM pulse duration of 255 fs with a pulse energy of 3 mJ and an average power of 105 W. The additional degrees of freedom provided by EDPA, such as direct access to the amplitudes and phases of all individual pulses in each burst, are exploited to compensate for gain saturation effects. Thus, a great temporal contrast of about 18.5 dB is reached and a very high combining efficiency of nearly 80%, including spatial as well as temporal combining, is reached. Furthermore, the system features three customized multi-pass cells as optical delay lines, minimizing the footprint of the combining stage to 0.5 m2. For the time being, two amplifiers are employed in order to initially optimize the parameters of EDPA and the performance of temporal combining. However, the laser system comprises a total of 16 parallel main amplifier channels, potentially enabling spatio-temporal combination of 128 separately amplified pulses with the currently applied bursts of 8 pulses. This extension is part of upcoming experiments and will allow for significant further scaling of the pulse energy in the near future.

Accessing the molecular fingerprint region between 2 and 20 mu m is a key aspect in modern metrology and spectroscopy. While the wavelength range from 2-5 mu m can easily be addressed through nonlinear frequency conversion starting from well-matured 1 mu m driving lasers, access to the deep mid-IR wavelength regime is difficult. This is, because of the limited transmission of non-oxide crystals (that offer high nonlinearity and good transmission for the aspired mid-IR idler) at the pump wavelength and/or multi-photon absorption. Shifting to a longer pump wavelength relieves these limitations. In this work we present an experiment based on intra pulse difference frequency generation (IPDFG) in GaSe driven by an ultrafast Tm-doped chirped pulse amplifier. This experiment led to an octave spanning mid-IR spectrum, covering the wavelength range between 7.2-16.5 mu m (-10 dB width) with 450 mW of average power at 1.25 MHz repetition rate. This result outperforms comparable sources driven at 1 mu m wavelength in average power and conversion efficiency, while providing much broader spectral coverage. To further facilitate the use of these promising sources in real-world spectroscopic applications, we have built a nonlinear amplifier, which, based on its compact and robust design is an ideal candidate in this respect. Optimizing the output ultimately led to high pulse quality 50 fs pulses with 250 nJ of pulse energy at 80 MHz of repetition rate and 20 W average output power, exceeding current designs in the anomalous dispersion regime by 1 order of magnitude. It is our ongoing effort to utilize this laser for parametric downconversion. Covering the wavelength regime beyond 5 mu m wavelength would make it an enabling technology for next generation spectroscopy, fundamental and life sciences.

In this work, we study the generation and evolution of phase-shifts between the modal interference pattern and the thermally-induced index grating due to pump-power changes. This study is not only important to understand new mitigation strategies based on controlling such phase-shifts, but also to comprehend how pump/signal noise can trigger TMI. Understanding how such a phase-shift can develop from a pump/signal change is not trivial, since the movement of both the MIP and the RIG are thermally driven and, therefore, should have similar time constants. Our simulations show unequivocally that a change of the pump power will lead to the generation of a phase-shift and the physical reason for this behavior is unveiled. The main reason is an increased sensitivity of the MIP to temperature variations because the local beat-length changes of the MIP are accumulated along the whole fiber length. Therefore, the further downstream the fiber a MIP maximum is (i.e. closer to the pump end in a counter-pumped configuration), the stronger and faster its position shift will be. This insight shows a way to obtain more TMI-resilient fiber designs and may help understanding the core area dependence of TMI.

We present theoretical and experimental investigations on effective single-transverse mode propagation in very large mode area (VLMA) fibers. Upscaling the mode area of fibers is the most effective approach to reduce the nonlinear interaction and, therefore, to allow for the confinement of high-power radiation without detrimental nonlinear effects. Even though the investigations are carried out in a passive large pitch fiber (LPF), they reveal an intrinsic scaling potential of this design which, if unlocked, will be beneficial for active VLMA fibers in the future. A commercial mode solver based on a full-vectorial finite-difference approach has been used to simulate the confinement losses of the fundamental and higher-order transverse modes. These simulations have revealed that the differential loss in one-missing-hole photonic crystal fibers can be tailored to be larger than 10 dB/m for fiber core sizes larger than 200 mu m at 1 mu m wavelength. In order to test the theoretical predictions experimental investigations have been performed. Therefore, a rod-type fiber has been fabricated and effective single-mode operation with unprecedented large mode-field diameters has been demonstrated. We were able to achieve single-mode propagation in a passive 1.3 m long LPF with a pitch of 140 mu m possessing a mode-field diameter of 205 mu m. Even a strong misalignment of the coupling condition did not lead to any significant appearance of higher order modes at the fiber exit, which proves the robustness of the single-mode operation. To the best of our knowledge these results represent the largest dimension of a fundamental transverse mode reported in a waveguide structure at 1 mu m wavelength to date. Compared to previous results the mode area is scaled by a factor of about 4 (with respect to active fibers) and a factor of similar to 8 (with respect to passive fibers).

In this work we have investigated the impact of pump-power noise on transverse mode instabilities (TMI) in high-power fiber laser systems. This is a crucial study since former works have shown that pump-power variations can induce a phase shift between the modal interference pattern and the thermally-induced refractive index grating and, thus, they are the most likely trigger for TMI. To experimentally investigate this behavior, we have generated white noise for different frequency bands with an arbitrary waveform generator and applied it to the pump diode. In a first experiment we have evaluated the frequency range of interest. It was found that only frequency components of the pump noise close to the main frequency of the TMI fluctuations influence the TMI threshold of the fiber laser system. In a second experiment we have measured the TMI threshold of the free-running system and compared it to the ones obtained when applying different pump-noise amplitudes. It was found that the TMI threshold can be decreased by almost a factor of three by increasing the noise of the pump source. This result is in good agreement with former theoretical and experimental studies and suggests that pump-power noise indeed acts as a main trigger for TMI. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the development of pump sources and drivers with a low noise level in a frequency range close to the main frequency of the TMI fluctuations could help to increase the TMI threshold of fiber laser systems.