few-cycle Inc.

Published purpose

NRC's Security and Disruptive Technologies (SDT) research center hosts research in the field of strong optical interactions with materials and nanostructures, with applications towards improved sensing. High-intensity femtosecond lasers are required to reach the high-field regime of light-solid interaction. Because NRC utilizes materials with widely different properties and with various length scales (nanoscopic to macroscopic), the laser system must efficiently deliver a unique combination of intense and weak fields over a wide spectral range, from deep-ultraviolet to mid-infrared frequencies, at high repetition rate (100 kHz), and with short pulses. The high repetition rate assures the high-field response of small nano- and atomic-scale materials can be adequately measured; the wide spectral coverage enables pumping and probing of material-specific resonances. In this challenge, NRC is seeking a femtosecond laser system that operates at a repetition rate of 100 kHz and that, starting from a pump laser with a center wavelength of 1.03 μm and pulse duration of 200 femtoseconds (fs), delivers a minimum of three laser outputs with pulse durations < 100 femtoseconds over wavelengths ranging from the deep-ultraviolet (450 nm) to the far infrared (10 μm). To ensure a sufficiently high intensity can be reached on the solid target, NRC requires μJ-level pulse energies for wavelengths longer than 1 μm.