Generation of annular femtosecond few-cycle pulses by self-compression and spatial filtering in solid thin plates

Annular-shaped femtosecond few-cycle pulses are generated by 40fs laser pulses propagating through 6 solid thin plates in numerical simulations as well as in experiments. The generation of such pulses takes advantage of the conical emission caused by plasma effect, which introduces continuously varying off-axis plasma density along the radial direction of the propagating beam. The negative dispersion induced by the plasma causes the pulse at particular radial location to be self-compressed and to form an annular beam of short pulse, which can be extracted simply by spatial filtering. Meanwhile, by adjusting the input pulse energy and position of each thin plate relative to the laser focus, we control the plasma density in thin plates which changes the ratio between ionization and effects providing positive dispersion, and obtain a higher compression ratio indicating that the scheme of solid thin plates has the flexibility to regulate the laser intensity so as to plasma density, thus the negative dispersion the pulse experiences during propagation. Few-cycle pulses as short as 8.8 fs are generated in experiments, meanwhile the shortest pulse duration found in the simulations is 5.0 fs, which corresponds to two optical cycles at its central wavelength 761 nm. This method has great potential in high-power few-cycle pulse generation. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Femtosecond few-cycle pulses with annular shape are generated by propagating 40fs laser pulses through 6 solid thin plates in numerical simulations and experiments. The generation of such pulses relies on the conical emission caused by plasma effect, inducing negative dispersion leading to self-compression of the pulse and formation of an annular beam. By adjusting input pulse energy and the position of thin plates relative to laser focus, control over plasma density can be achieved, modifying the ratio between ionization and positive dispersion effects to regulate laser intensity and plasma density, thereby managing the negative dispersion experienced by the pulse during propagation.