Applications of parametric processes to high-quality multicolour ultrashort pulses, pulse cleaning and CEP stable sub-3fs pulse

Our recent experimental results of three methods related to and useful for the generation of attosecond pulses are summarized. The pulses obtained by all of them have high qualities in terms of phase, temporal, spectral and spatial properties which are based on the physical principles associated with the parametric processes. First, carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stable sub-5 fs and sub-3 fs pulses by non-collinear optical parametric amplification (NOPA) in the near-infrared and visible spectral range will be described. The mechanism of the passive CEP stabilization is described. Passively stabilized idler and its second harmonic (SH) pulses from NOPAs are compressed to sub-5fs and sub-3fs, respectively. Compression of the idler output from a NOPA and its SH is attained with a specially designed characterization method during the compression. Second, generation of multicolour pulses by the cascaded four-wave mixing process in bulk media is discussed. As short as 15-fs multicoloured femtosecond pulses are obtained with two ∼40 fs pulses incident to a fused-silica glass plate by this method. These broadband multicolour sidebands are expected to provide single-cycle or sub-fs pulses after the Fourier synthesis. Third, a new technique based on self-diffraction in the Kerr medium is used to clean and shorten the femtosecond laser pulse. The cleaned pulse with high temporal contrast is expected to be used as a seed for a background-free petawatt laser system and then used as the laser source for high-energy attosecond pulse generation in a solid target. The mechanisms of CEP stabilization, pulse spectral smoothening and pulse contrast enhancement are comparatively discussed.