Activities >> Joint Research Activities

JRA1: FOSCIL | JRA2: OTTER

JRA 1: Frontiers of Optical Science: Controlling Intense Light (FOSCIL)

Objectives	Progress made during the reporting year 2005
1.Development of phase-controlled few-cycle terawatt sources	Source development is progressing rapidly. It was demonstrated that phase-stable non-linear parametric amplification is highly attractive and scaling to high peak powers >1 Terawatt was achieved in a system with a 30Hz rep. rate. The final goal is to increase this rep. rate to 1 or even 5 kHz, requiring the development of very powerful pump lasers.
2. Conversion of controlled fs light into the NIR, UV, XUV and SXR spectral range	Controlled fs laser light has been generated now in wide spectral ranges, using various non-linear conversion techniques, the control over the sources is improving dramatically and tunability is no longer a real issue.  Several of the pulse characterisation techniques developed under objective 3 are being integrated in the conversion experiments to improve and optimize yields. Progress in the objectives 2 and 3 are more and more strongly interlinked.
3. Reproducible, optimized generation and full characterization of XUV/SXR pulses	See also objective 2. Efficient generation of powerful XUV/SXR laser pulses using the dedicated high-power lasers as well as the phase-stabilised femtosecond few-cycle lasers is successfully pursued. Various techniques to characterize and control these XUV/SXR laser pulses are being tested now by the various JRA1 partners.
4. Extension of frequency combs into the NIR and UV-XUV spectral domains	The extension of frequency combs in various spectral regions is well underway, illustrated by various highly accurate metrology experiments in the near-infrared on CO2 and metastable He and in the deep UV/VUV at 212.5nm on Kr and at 125nm in Xe. A new approach to produce XUV radiation at 100MHz rep. rate via High Harmonic Generation has been demonstrated.   Several highly interesting publications already have been produced and experiments are open for Access now.

Read an overview on the first 18 months of the project

Participants in JRA 1

• LCVU, Laser Centre, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• CUSBO, Centre for Ultrafast Science and Biomedical Optics, Italy
• MBI, Max Born Institute, Berlin, Germany
• LOA, Laboratoire dOptique Appliquée, Palaiseau, France
• LENS, European Lab. Non-linear Spectroscopy, Florence, Italy
• LLC, Lund Laser Centre, Sweden
• SLIC, Saclay Laser Interaction Centre, France
• CELIA, Centre dEtudes des Lasers Intenses et Applications, Bordeaux, France
• ULF-Forth, Ultraviolet Laser Facility, Heraklion, Greece, Crete
• MPQ, Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany

JRA 1 Coordinator: Wim Hogervorst, LCVU