Optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) are known as flexible tools for the generation of broadly tunable ultrashort pulses. On the other hand, if suitably designed, OPAs can act as broadband amplifiers, which can be used to dramatically shorten, by more than an order of magnitude, the duration of the driving pulse, down to the fewcycle regime. In addition, OPAs can exploit non-linear optical interactions to achieve passive, all-optical carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization.

In this webinar hosted by the OSA Nonlinear Optics Technical Group, Dr. Giulio Cerullo from the Politecnico di Milano will review research aimed at designing and implementing OPAs for the generation of broadly tunable few-optical-cycle pulses. They have demonstrated different OPA schemes capable of producing 2÷3-cycle pulses with carrier wavelength almost continuously tunable from the visible to the mid-IR. Dr. Cerullo will also discuss the difference-frequency generation process taking place in OPAs as a powerful tool for passive CEP stabilization of such pulses. Finally, Dr. Cerullo will show how to coherently combine different ultra-broadband OPAs in order to generate single-cycle CEP-controlled pulses, which will constitute a powerful tool to steer electronic wave-packet dynamics in high-field science.

What You Will Learn/Seminar Objectives:

• Design criteria for ultra-broadband OPAs
• Examples of broadband OPA architectures for the generation of tunable few-optical-cycle pulses
• Principle of passive CEP stabilization
• Design of passively CEP stabilized OPAs
• Coherent pulse synthesis with serial and parallel schemes

Who Should Attend:

• PhD students, PostDocs and Researchers working in ultrafast optics, ultrafast spectroscopy (including femtochemistry and femtobiology) and high-field physics (high harmonic generation, attosecond science).

Level:

• The level of the webinar is intermediate to advanced. Basic knowledge of nonlinear and ultrafast optics would be beneficial.