High-efficiency, broad band, high-damage threshold high-index gratings for femtosecond pulse compression

Federico Canova (1) , Olivier Uteza (2) , Jean-Paul Chambaret (1) , Manuel Flury (3) , Svetlen Tonchev (3, 4) , Renate Fechner (5) , Olivier Parriaux (3)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 LP3 - Laboratoire Lasers, Plasmas et Procédés photoniques
3 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien
4 ISSP - Institut of the Solid State Physics
5 Institut für Oberflächenmodifizierung,

High efficiency, broad-band TE-polarization diffraction over a wavelength range centered at 800 nm is obtained by high index gratings placed on a non-corrugated mirror. More than 96% efficiency wide band top-hat diffraction efficiency spectra, as well as more than 1 J/cm2 damage threshold under 50 fs pulses are demonstrated experimentally. This opens the way to high-efficiency Chirped Pulse Amplification for high average power laser machining by means of all-dielectric structures as well as for ultra-short high energy pulses by means of metal-dielectric structures.

Keywords: Pulse compression; Gratings; Guided waves; Waveguides; slab; Ultrafast lasers; Pulse compression.

Domains: Optics / Photonic

Federico Canova, Olivier Uteza, Jean-Paul Chambaret, Manuel Flury, Svetlen Tonchev, et al.. High-efficiency, broad band, high-damage threshold high-index gratings for femtosecond pulse compression. Optics Express, 2007, 15 (23), pp.15324-15334. ⟨ujm-00381564⟩