title: Control of nonlinear spectral phase induced by ultra-broadband optical parametric amplification.
abstract: Optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) impose an optical parametric phase (OPP) onto the amplified signal. It manifests itself as a spectral phase in the case of broadband signals and, therefore, hampers pulse compression. Here we present, for the first time, a complete experimental characterization of this OPP for different ultra-broadband noncollinear OPA configurations. This measurement allows us to compensate the OPP and to achieve Fourier-limited pulses as short as 1.9 optical cycles. A numerical model is in excellent agreement with our measurements and reveals the importance of high order phase compensation in the case of noncollinear phase matching. In contrast, operation at degeneracy enables almost complete compensation of the OPP by second-order dispersion only.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics, Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Albert-Einstein-Strasse 15, 07745 Jena, Germany. stefan.demmler@uni‑jena.de
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Demmler
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rothhardt
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hädrich
authors.forename: Jake
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bromage
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Limpert
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tünnermann