The research team pushes the boundaries of high-energy laser pulses

Using the Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) facility, the research team of Professor François Légaré of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has moved the boundaries of high-energy pulse propagation in a non-linear medium through solitary states multidimensional energies. This breakthrough allows for the direct generation of extremely short and intense laser pulses that are highly stable over time and space. The results of this work were published in Photonics of nature.

Common laser systems limit operation to a single transverse mode, which places an upper limit on laser technology. So far, the higher dimensions have been considered harmful as they are prone to high instability and collapse. This makes the scientific impact of this work remarkable. The observed self-sustaining multidimensional wave packets are driven by picosecond pump pulses in the near infrared in a gas-filled hollow core fiber, which will be of considerable interest to many scientists around the world.

These multidimensional lonely states also have a huge technological impact.

INRS researchers were able to generate coherent high-energy and spacetime light fields. This discovery could lead to groundbreaking discoveries in laser science for a wide range of applications. The research involves enormous theoretical advances, highly complex numerical simulations and systematic experimental studies. It was performed in the ALLS facility of INRS, a world-class research facility focused on the development of new types of lasers with revolutionary applications.

“Light at high energy levels behaves differently than we thought,” says Reza Safaei, Ph.D. student at INRS, “We were able to design the system to work in a chaotic and overloaded regime where the noticeable nonlinear improvement occurs by itself. The interactions between multidimensional states cause the light in the laser pulses to self-organize into highly stable multidimensional states. This is a great surprise, since these lonely states result from highly unstable chaos , like hearing a note coming out of a drum! “

“The immediate technological impact of this work is the generation of pulses of a few cycles from the Yb laser driver to picoseconds using a simple, robust and efficient approach that provides novel laser technology for strong field physics,” said Guangyu Fan. Ph.D. student at INRS.

‘It is particularly useful for scaling extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and soft tabletop X-ray sources up to higher photon energies due to the longer central wavelength of the output beam,’ said Professor François Légaré. “As we look to the future, lasers and amplifiers that can operate elegantly in multidimensional states can have significantly more power than single mode-based devices, with a significant controllable non-linear improvement. This possibility extends beyond ultrafast laser technology. to all laser science, as dimensionality and spatial / spacetime non-linearities are key limitations for high-powered lasers of all types. “

The team believes this idea could drive laser technology, which has been basically stuck in one mode for more than 20 years. This will enable the development of very compact, high-power laser systems with a wide variety of industrial applications, including micromachining and material processing. In addition, this innovative laser technology is now being used to develop very compact tabletop ultrashort X-ray sources with potential applications for tracking ultra-fast phenomena such as chemical and dynamic magnetization reactions, as well as for high spatial resolution biomedical imaging in water. spectral range of the window. INRS has also protected the intellectual property related to this potentially revolutionary laser method.

Provided by the National Institute for Scientific Research – INRS