Few-cycle femtosecond optical pulses in the visible and near-infrared

Ultra-short femtosecond laser pulses challenge the limits in optics. It is said that they are as hard to measure as they are to generate, and that they are hard to generate is beyond any doubt. This project aims to change that: starting from cheap fiber lasers and only a single active component it is the goal to generate ultra-short high-energy laser pulses in the visible and near-infrared (VINIR) areas.

 

With ultra-short femtosecond laser pulses it is possible to film, e.g., chemical reactions and molecular vibrations real time: exactly as a person standing in a stroboscope light, it is possible to get a unique insight into how the processes evolve step-by-step. The pulses can also be used for nanosurgery, where non-invasive surgery of living cells is possible, and micromachining of materials with nanometer resolution.

 

No lasers can directly generate ultra-short femtosecond laser pulses with duration of just a few optical cycles (5-20 fs). Today one has therefore to use very complicated setups and expensive equipment, especially in the VINIR areas, which are so important in medicine and biophysics. The goal of the project is to use optical solitons to compress longer laser pulses – generated by cheap, stable, effective and compact pulsed high-energy fiber lasers – in an ordinary nonlinear crystal. The combination of a cheap laser source and simple equipment will lead to a much more wide-spread and commercial use of ultra-short pulses: femtosecond laser pulses will become common to everybody.