A scalable approach to the pulse energy of a single-cycle laser using a dual-chirped OPA (Invited Paper)

We propose and demonstrate a novel scheme called the advanced dual-chirped optical parametric amplification (DC-OPA) for amplifying a single-cycle mid-infrared (MIR) pulse. Based on our novel scheme, where two kinds of nonlinear crystals (Bismuth Triborate and MgO doped Lithium Niobate) are employed for DC-OPA, over one-octave bandwidth from 1.4 um to 3.1 um, carrier-to-envelope phase stable MIR laser pulses are achieved with an output pulse energy of 60 mJ. The compressed pulse duration is down to 8.5 fs, corresponding to 1.05 cycles with a center wavelength of 2.45 um and peak power of multi-TW. As far as we know, the obtained pulse energy and peak power represent the highest values for single-cycle MIR optical parametric amplification. Moreover, thanks to the energy scalability of the advanced DC-OPA scheme, the prospects of the multi-TW sub-cycle laser pulses will be discussed.