Ultrafast Mid-IR Laser Pulses Generation via Chirp Manipulated Optical Parametric Amplification

Over the past decades, optical parametric amplification (OPA) has become one of the most promising sources of ultrafast Mid-IR laser, owing to its outstanding properties including ultrabroad bandwidth, superior tunability, good beam quality, and scalable energy. In this paper, we review the recent progress in ultrashort laser pulse generation via chirp manipulated OPA, which improves the energy scalability and gain bandwidth by strategically chirping both pump and seed pulses. The gain mechanism is theoretically analyzed and the OPA processes are numerically simulated. In addition, the concept is verified experimentally. Femtosecond pulses with hundreds of mJ are generated in a high energy dual-chirped-OPA (DC-OPA), and ultrabroadband μJ-level spectra supporting sub-2-cycle pulse durations are achieved in BBP-OPA. Furthermore, the obtained pulses show excellent tunability through the NIR to Mid-IR regions, which makes them a suitable seeding source for further amplification as well as powerful tools in various applications such as strong field physics, attosecond science, and ultrafast spectroscopy.