CTu3M.8.

pdf CLEO Technical Digest OSA 2012

An Active Feedback Pulse Shaping Technique with

Spectral Phase and Intensity Modulation to Generate
Transform Limited, Parabolic Pulses for CPA Systems
Dat Nguyen1, Mohammad Umar Piracha1, Kyungbum Kim2,
Mathew Hamamoto2, Michael Mielke2, Peter J. Delfyett1,
1 CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816
2 Radiance Inc, 2199 S. McDowell Blvd. Petaluma, California 94954
dtnguyen@creol.ucf.edu, delfyett@creol.ucf.edu

Abstract: A first demonstration of fiber based CPA system with an active feedback loop utilizing
spectral phase and intensity modulation to generate clean, high contrast, 10 dB pedestals
suppression, transform limited pulse with parabolic intensity profile.
2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS Codes: (320.5540) Pulse shaping; (060.2320) Fiber optics amplifiers & oscillators; (140.4050) Mode-locked lasers;

1. Introduction and experimental setup

Optical pulses with parabolic temporal intensity profile have been shown to be excellent candidates for chirped
pulse amplification (CPA) systems, due to their attractive features such as resistance to optical wave breaking,
ability of retain their intensity profile during propagation in gain media, and enhanced linearity in chirp [1]. Their
linear chirp allows efficient and high quality pulse compression [2]. Various attempts to produce parabolic pulses
have been investigated, most recently involving a dynamic pulse shaping technique to control pulse intensity in the
temporal domain [3]. However, when the desired energy levels are high, due to the combination of dispersion and
nonlinear effects, even a small deviation in the temporal profile of the generated parabolic pulse from the perfect
parabolic shape will result in large pedestal generation, degrading pulse quality. Therefore a better scheme is
required to overcome the limitation of pulse shaping techniques to help produce high quality, transform limited
pulses with high power. In this approach, we propose an active feedback loop, which controls both the spectral
phase and amplitude of the pulses, resulting in the generation of transform limited parabolic pulses.

Phase & Linear Pulse Auto

Seed Laser Amplitude Amp Correlation
Pulse Compressor
Control
Stretcher

Computer
controlled FROG
Feedback loop Pulse Quality
Detector
FROG software

Fig. 1 Schematic of the experimental setup

The schematic for parabolic pulse shaping in this experiment is shown in Fig. 1. A mode-locked laser (MLL)
with a repetition rate of 1.25 MHz and 15 nm optical bandwidth (at 10 dB) is used. The pulses generated by this
laser are temporally stretched to 1.5 ns at full width half maximum. A commercially available wave-shaper, which
utilizes Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) technology, is used to modulate the spectral intensity of pulses to generate
a parabolic intensity profile. Due to wavelength-to-time mapping, the temporal profile of stretched pulses is also
parabolic. A fiber-based amplifier is used to amplify the generated parabolic pulses to 50 mW, before a Treacy
compressor is used to compress pulses to achieve high peak power. An autocorrelator is used to monitor the
temporal width of compressed pulses.
A second harmonic generation (SHG) frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) is used to measure the full
electric field of the compressed pulses. The FROG traces are analyzed by the commercially available FROG
software to reconstruct the spectral amplitude and phase profiles of the pulse. This spectral phase information is
used to adjust phase modulation by the wave-shaper. By combining spectral phase modulation with parabolic pulse
shaping, we present a reliable and versatile technique to realize high power pulse that retains its parabolic shape and
attains clean, high contrast, pedestal free, transform limited pulses in CPA systems.
 CTu3M.8.pdf CLEO Technical Digest OSA 2012

2. Results
In the experiment, the optical spectrum of the input pulse and desired parabolic spectrum are shown in Fig. 2a.
Initially, no spectral intensity and phase modulation was applied to the input pulses. The resulting temporal profile
of the CPA pulses after compression is shown in Fig. 2b, and is about 1.1 ps. In Fig. 2c, the output optical spectrum
after spectral intensity modulation to generate the desired parabolic shape is shown. This spectrum displays a signal
to noise ratio of 28 dB and characteristic sharp edges of a parabola. The corresponding autocorrelation trace of this
parabolic pulse (Fig. 2d) has a slightly shorter temporal duration of about 1 ps. These pulses are sent to the SHG
FROG and the FROG traces are subsequently analyzed to retrieve spectral phase information. Based on this phase
information, the wave-shaper is programmed to adjust phase modulation applied to the input pulse, resulting in
much shorter measured autocorrelation (AC) trace of 0.7 ps, with very good temporal pedestals suppression.

-40 (a) 1.0 (b) -25

(c) 1.0 (d)
Amplitude (dBm)

-45 -30

Amplitude (au)
Intensity (dB)

Intensity (dB)
-50 -35
1.1 ps 1 ps
0.5 -40 0.5
-55
-45
-60
Input -50
-65 Target output -55 Optical Spectrum
0.0 0.0
1545 1550 1555 1560 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 1545 1550 1555 1560 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
Wavelength (nm) Delay (ps) Wavelength (nm) Delay (ps)

Fig. 2 a) Input optical spectrum (black) and desired parabolic output spectrum (red)
b) Measured AC trace of compressed CPA pulse without pulse shaping c) Output optical spectrum after intensity modulation
d) Measured AC trace of compressed CPA pulse after intensity modulation

Fig. 3a shows the FROG traces of CPA pulses without pulse shaping. Fig. 3b shows the FROG traces of CPA
pulses with spectral intensity and phase modulation. The retrieved spectral phase of the pulse before and after phase
modulation can be seen in the Fig. 3c. The error of the FROG retrieval is on the order of 1.5e-3, showing a very
good convergence. The linear fit of the retrieved spectral phase indicates a maximum deviation of 0.75 radians
towards the tail of the spectrum, almost flat phase across the center, and root mean square deviation is 0.25 radians.
In Fig. 3d, the pedestals in temporal profile of a CPA pulse without pulse shaping have been suppressed by 10 dB at
3 ps delay; the measured autocorrelation trace shows a very good agreement with a calculated autocorrelation trace
of transform-limited pulse of 0.7 ps temporal duration.

(a) (b) 35
(c) 0
(d)
30 -5
25
Intensity (dB)
-10
Phase (rad)

20
-15
15 With phase modulation -20
10 Linear fit
No phase modulation -25
5 Transform limited pulse
0 -30 CPA with pulse shaping
CPA without pulse shaping
-5 -35
1545 1548 1551 1554 1557 1560 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Wavelength (nm) Delay (ps)
Fig 3 a) Measured FROG traces of CPA pulse without pulse shaping, b) Measured FROG traces of CPA pulse with both spectral intensity and
phase shaping, vertical axis is time, with total duration of 24.5 ps, horizontal axis is wavelength, ranged from 771-781 nm.
c) Reconstructed spectral phase with only spectral intensity modulation (red), with both spectral phase and intensity modulation (blue) and its
linear fit d) Calculated and measured AC traces, compare with AC traces of CPA pulse with only spectral intensity modulation (red)

3. Conclusion
This experiment is the first attempt of parabolic pulse shaping with both spectral intensity and spectra phase
modulation in a CPA system. The use of SHG FROG together with the wave-shaper in active feedback loop
allows controlling of spectral phase and intensity modulation, resulting in transform limited parabolic pulses of 0.7
ps duration when compressing CPA pulses using a Treacy compressor. This approach will be of significance in
many CPA applications of fiber laser systems, allowing the generation of high quality ultrafast pulses.

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actively shaped parabolic spectrum, Opt. Express. 15 (25), 16945 (2009)
[2] V.I. Kruglov, A.C. Peacock, J.M. Dudley, J.D. Harvey, Self-similar propagation of high-power parabolic pulses in optical fiber
amplifiers, Opt. Lett. 25 (24), 1753 (2000)
[3] D. Nguyen, M.U. Piracha, P.J. Delfyett, Dynamic parabolic pulse generation using temporal shaping of wavelength to time mapped
pulses, Opt. Express 19 (13), 12305 (2011)