Abstract
In recent years, quantum cascade lasers have matured to become compact, powerful sources of coherent mid infrared light. Yet, the ultrafast carrier dynamics in these sources has so far restricted the formation of high intensity ultrashort pulses. In this work, we demonstrate the formation of similar to 630 fs QCL pulses with a peak power of similar to 4.3 W. We break the picosecond barrier in an approach similar to chirped pulse amplification, where we externally recompress the maximally chirped output of a quantum cascade laser frequency comb. Ultrashort pulse formation is confirmed with a novel asynchronous optical sampling technique. These results emphasise the potential of quantum cascade lasers also as sources for non-linear experiments in the mid-infrared. Show more
Publication status
publishedExternal links
Book title
Frontiers in Ultrafast Optics: Biomedical, Scientific, and Industrial Applications XXIIJournal / series
Proceedings of SPIEVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
SPIEEvent
Subject
Femtosecond pulses; mid-infrared; quantum cascade laser; frequency combs; pulse compression; asynchronous upconversion samplingOrganisational unit
03759 - Faist, Jérôme / Faist, Jérôme
Funding
176584 - High-resolution QCL frequency comb spectrometer for the detection of trace gases and their isotopes (SNF)
165639 - Monolithic, self referenced quantum cascade laser frequency comb (SNF)
820419 - Quantum simulation and entanglement engineering in quantum cascade laser frequency combs (EC)
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