arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to T. R. Schibli.
Pulses as short as 260 fs have been generated in a diode-pumped low-gain Er:Yb:glass laser by exploiting the nonlinear optical response of single-layer graphene. The application of this novel material to solid-state bulk lasers opens up a way to compact and robust lasers with ultrahigh repetition rates.
We report new limits on the phase coherence of the ultrafast mode-locking process in an octave-spanning Ti:sapphire comb. We find that the mode-locking mechanism correlates optical phase across a full optical octave with less than 2.5 micro Hz relative linewidth. This result is at least two orders of magnitude below recent predictions for quantum-limited individual comb-mode linewidths, verifying that the mode-locking mechanism strongly correlates quantum noise across the comb spectrum.
We demonstrate a novel technique for coupling XUV harmonic radiation out of a femtosecond enhancement cavity. We use a small-period diffraction grating etched directly into the surface of a dielectric mirror. For the fundamental light, this element acts as a high reflector. For harmonic wavelengths, it acts as a diffraction grating, coupling XUV radiation out of the cavity. Using this method, we observed the 3rd through 21st odd harmonics with a dramatic increase in usable power over previous results of high harmonic generation at high repetition rates.
We analyze several possibilities for precisely measuring electronic transitions in atomic helium by the direct use of phase-stabilized femtosecond frequency combs. Because the comb is self-calibrating and can be shifted into the ultraviolet spectral region via harmonic generation, it offers the prospect of greatly improved accuracy for UV and far-UV transitions. To take advantage of this accuracy an ultracold helium sample is needed. For measurements of the triplet spectrum a magneto-optical trap (MOT) can be used to cool and trap metastable 2^3S state atoms. We analyze schemes for measuring the two-photon $2^3S \to 4^3S$ interval, and for resonant two-photon excitation to high Rydberg states, $2^3S \to 3^3P \to n^3S,D$. We also analyze experiments on the singlet-state spectrum. To accomplish this we propose schemes for producing and trapping ultracold helium in the 1^1S or 2^1S state via intercombination transitions. A particularly intriguing scenario is the possibility of measuring the $1^1S \to 2^1S$ transition with extremely high accuracy by use of two-photon excitation in a magic wavelength trap that operates identically for both states. We predict a ``triple magic wavelength'' at 412 nm that could facilitate numerous experiments on trapped helium atoms, because here the polarizabilities of the 1^1S, 2^1S and 2^3S states are all similar, small, and positive.