In an effort to develop a robust and efficient front end for a chirped-pulse parametric amplification chain, we demonstrate a broadband difference-frequency converter driven by a monolithic femtosecond Yb-doped-fiber amplifier and emitting carrier-envelope-offset-free pulses with the energy of tens of nanojoules tunable in the wavelength range from 1200 nm to beyond 2 mum. Next to providing the...

Broadband optical parametric amplification in the IR region has reached a new milestone through the use of a non-collinear Frequency domain Optical Parametric Amplification system. We report a laser source delivering 11.6 fs pulses with 30 mJ of energy at a central wavelength of 1.8 μm at 10 Hz repetition rate corresponding to a peak power of 2.5 TW. The peak power scaling is accompanied by a p...

The master equation of quantum optical density operator is transformed to the equation of characteristic function. The parametric amplification and amplitude damping as well as the phase damping are considered. The solution for the most general initial quantum state is obtained for parametric amplification and amplitude damping. The purity of one mode Gaussian system and the entanglement of two...

The technique of Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) is becoming increasingly popular as pre-amplifiers for seeding laser systems [1,2] and as potential amplifiers for extremely high peak power systems. This is because they are capable of amplifying a broad bandwidth and can have large gains. Our previous study of the ASE contrast of the Vulcan laser system [3] demonstrated t...

The master equation of quantum optical density operator is transformed to the equation of characteristic function. The parametric amplification and amplitude damping as well as the phase damping are considered. The solution for the most general initial quantum state is obtained for parametric amplification and amplitude damping. The purity of one mode Gaussian system and the entanglement of two...

High-conversion-efficiency, high-stability optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification is demonstrated with a spatiotemporally shaped pump laser system. Broadband 5-mJ pulses are produced at a 5-Hz repetition rate with a pump-to-signal conversion efficiency of 29% and energy stability better than 2% rms. To our knowledge this is the highest conversion efficiency and stability achieved in an ...

Hybrid femtosecond lasers combine the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) in laser media with optical parametric chirped pulsed amplification (OPCPA) in nonlinear crystals. A key feature of these systems consists in matching the parametric amplification gain bandwidth of nonlinear crystals to the spectral gain bandwidth of laser amplifying crystals. Gain bandwidths as broad as 150 nm can be obtai...

Parametric resonance and amplification are important in both fundamental physics and technological applications. Here we report very high frequency (VHF) parametric resonators and mechanical-domain amplifiers based on nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). Compound mechanical nanostructures patterned by multilayer, top-down nanofabrication are read out by a novel scheme that parametrically modul...

We report a numerical investigation on parametric amplification of high-bit-rate signals and related noise figure inside silicon waveguides in the presence of two-photon absorption (TPA), TPA-induced free-carrier absorption, free-carrier-induced dispersion and linear loss. Different pump parameters are considered to achieve net gain and low noise figure. We show that the net gain can only be ac...