We report on a Ti:sapphire amplifier system which produces 21 fs, 1 mJ pulses at 1 kHz. A nanojoule-level seed pulse makes 8 passes through a highly doped Ti:sapphire crystal for a total gain of approximately 10⁶. The crystal is pumped with 12 mJ of 527 nm light which is converted into amplified pulse energy with an efficiency exceeding 10%. We have used this laser system to generate ultra-short UV light pulses through third harmonic generation. By focusing the 21 fs pulses in argon and other gases (including air), we obtain UV pulses with energy 1 (mu) J and wavelength 267 nm. The duration of the UV pulses was measured to be approximately 16 fs, representing the shortest pulses in this wavelength range measured to date.

Date Published: 8 May 1996
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 2701, Generation, Amplification, and Measurement of Ultrashort Laser Pulses III, (8 May 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.239726

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2701:
Generation, Amplification, and Measurement of Ultrashort Laser Pulses III
William E. White; David H. Reitze, Editor(s)