A new type of solid-state femtosecond amplifier is demonstrated that is based on quasi-phase-matched parametric amplification. Such gain media are different from conventional solid-state amplifiers in that their amplification bandwidths and pump and signal wavelengths can be engineered. Furthermore, high gain is characteristic of parametric amplification, permitting extraction of high energies ...

(Received 00 Month 200x; In final form 00 Month 200x) We study experimentally parametric amplification in the continuous regime using a transverse-degenerate type-II Optical Parametric Oscillator operated below threshold. We demonstrate that this device is able to amplify either in the phase insensitive or phase sensitive way first a single mode beam, then a multimode image. Furthermore the tot...

We present a theoretical study on coherent extreme ultraviolet (XUV) attosecond pulse amplification mediated by nonlinear parametric enhanced forward scattering occurring in the interaction of a strong femtosecond infrared (IR) laser pulse combined with a weak attosecond XUV pulse train with an atom. We predict large amplification of XUV radiation when the IR strong pulse and the XUV weak pulse...

Four-wave optical parametric amplification (FWOPA) in a Raman-active medium is experimentally investigated by use of an air-filled hollow fiber. A femtosecond pump pulse shorter than the period of molecular motion excites the coherent molecular motion of the Raman-active molecules during the parametric amplification of a signal pulse. The excited coherent motion modulates the frequency of the s...

We have observed parametric generation and amplification of ultracold atom pairs. A 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate was loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice with quasimomentum k0 and spontaneously scattered into two final states with quasimomenta k1 and k2 . Furthermore, when a seed of atoms was first created with quasimomentum k1 we observed parametric amplification of scattered atoms p...

Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) is one of the most powerful techniques for generating high-energy femtosecond laser pulses. Many efforts were devoted to get spectral-band amplification able to support sub-10-fs pulses. In the optical parametric amplification (OPA), broad gain bandwidths can be obtained if the wave-vectors mismatch, ∆k, slowly increases when the signal fre...

We observe parametric amplification in a torsional micron-scale mechanical resonator. An applied voltage is used to make a dynamic change to the torsional spring constant. Oscillating the spring constant at twice the resonant frequency results in a phase dependent amplification of the resonant motion. Our results agree well with the theory of parametric amplification. By taking swept frequency ...

We describe a novel pulse-delayed scheme to realize degenerate optical parametric amplification in chi((3)) planar waveguides. The scheme utilizes two identical birefringent plates placed before and after a chi((3)) planar waveguide to implement a single-arm, pulse-multiplexed nonlinear Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Using this scheme, we demonstrate ultrafast degenerate optical parametric amplif...

We describe a method of ultrashort-pulse and ultrafast-pulse-train generation through optical parametric amplification of a laser beat wave. Numerical simulation shows that 250-fs laser pulses at 1.55 lm are generated from a beat-wave seeded optical parametric amplifier pumped by a 30-ps laser at 1064 nm. The pulse compression is attributable to sideband generation and parametric amplification ...