title: Difference frequency generation of femtosecond mid infrared pulses employing intense Stokes pulses excitation in a photonic crystal fiber.
abstract: We demonstrate a novel method of generating milli-watt level mid-IR (MIR) pulses based on difference frequency mixing of the output from a 40 MHz Yb fiber Chirped Pulse Amplifier (CPA) and the intense Stokes pulses generated in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with two closely spaced zero dispersion wavelengths (ZDW). By taking advantage of the unique dispersion profile of the fiber, high power narrowband Stokes pulses are selectively generated in the normal dispersion region of the PCF with up to 1.45 nJ of pulse energy. Mixing with 12 nJ of pump pulses at 1035 nm in a type-II AgGaS(2) crystal yields MIR pulses around 5.5 µm wavelength with up to 3 mW of average power and 75 pJ of pulse energy. The reported method can be extended to generation of other MIR wavelengths by selecting PCFs with different second ZDWs or engineering the fiber dispersion profile via longitudinal tapering.
authors.affiliation: The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627-0186, USA. yuhong.yao@rochester.edu
authors.forename: Yuhong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Wayne H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Knox