title: Broadly tunable femtosecond pulse generation in the near and mid-infrared.
abstract: High-repetition-rate (80-MHz) femtosecond infrared pulses are generated by difference frequency mixing (DFM) a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser with a phase-locked synchronized cw mode-locked Nd:YAG picosecond laser. This DFM scheme is of particular interest for generating ultrashort near-IR pulses (~10 fs) because group velocity mismatch with a pump pulse can be ignored. The simplicity and the broad wavelength tunability (from the near IR to the mid-IR) of this scheme is demonstrated. Short (125-fs FWHM) optical pulses in the near IR around 1.5 mum are obtained with noncritical type-I phase-matched LiB(3) O(5). We also used a similar scheme to generate mid-infrared pulses at 3.0 mum with type-II phase-matched KTiOPO(4).
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: A D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Bawagan
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Charbonneau
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stolow