High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume. , Issue , ()
Generation of 1-MHz, 64-W, 26-fs green pulses via SHG of nonlinearly compressed pulses at 1.03 μm [Early Posting]
High-order harmonic generation (HHG) in noble gases driven by femtosecond lasers is currently a feasible solution to obtain ultrafast pulses in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelength range. Implementation of high-flux EUV sources requires driving HHG using an ultrafast laser source at the visible wavelength range with MHz repetition-rate. In this paper, we employ a multi-pass cell followed by chirped mirrors to compress 1-MHz, 200-W, 300-fs pulses at 1.03 μm to a duration of 35 fs. The resulting 186-W compressed pulses are focused onto 0.5-mm thick BBO crystal to drive second harmonic generation and produce positively chirped pulses at 520 nm. These green pulses are dechirped to 26 fs in duration with an average power of 64 W, which, to the best of our knowledge, represents the highest average power of green pulses with the duration below 100 fs.