Multi-meter fiber-delivery and pulse self-compression of milli-Joule femtosecond laser and fiber-aided laser-micromachining

We report on damage-free fiber-guidance of milli-Joule energy-level and 600-femtosecond laser pulses into hypocycloid core-contour Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fibers. Up to 10 meter-long fibers were used to successfully deliver Yb-laser pulses in robustly single-mode fashion. Different pulse propagation regimes were demonstrated by simply changing the fiber dispersion and gas. Self-compression to similar to 50 fs, and intensity-level nearing petawatt/cm(2) were achieved. Finally, free focusing-optics laser-micromachining was also demonstrated on different materials. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America