UFOX Laser featured in Laser Focus World Magazine

10 October, 2022

Exploring the Limits of Yb:YLF Lasers

A 1% Yb-doped 2-cm-long YLF crystal used in cryogenic amplification studies. Photo by Muharrem Kilinc.

The conference presentation made by the UFOX Laser team at CLEO 2022 titled: "Broadly tunable (993-1110 nm) and ultra-short pulse (sub-40-fs) Yb: YLF lasers" was featured in Laser Focus World magazine.

“Researchers are exploring the limits of ytterbium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride’s wavelength tuning and femtosecond-pulse generation to better understand its capability as a versatile seeder for cryogenic ytterbium-based amplifiers.”

Our group is aiming to develop cryogenic Yb:YLF amplifier systems with pulse energies up to the Joule level at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. Using optimized seed sources, we aim to reach an output pulsewidth down to 250 fs from these amplifiers, which can not be achieved using Yb:YAG based technologies. This short pulse amplifier system, will then be used to efficiently generate terahertz light in the 100-500 GHz range, which is needed for our electron accelerators and finally for coherent attosecond X-ray generation. With collaborators we will also pursue high energy pulse compression. Due to its exceptional high beam quality, the Yb:YLF amplifier is also an excellent source for OPA and OPCPA pumping.

The seed oscillators that are developed for cryogenic amplifier systems could potentially also be operated at multi-GHz repetition rates. Due to their low-loss nature, mode-locked Yb:YLF lasers could store large amounts of intracavity power, and hence they have potential usage as ultra-low timing jitter oscillators for photonic microwave generation and other applications.

Laser Focus World magazine article featured our efforts towards development of versatile seed sources for cryogenic Yb:YLF amplifier systems.

Reference
What goes into building amplifiers for an attosecond x-ray free-electron source?; Laser Focus Magazin Article