Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

Class 5 Photonics developes the most powerful femtosecond lasers on the market based on a broad range of advanced nonlinear technologies. Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) can be paired with multi-100W Ytterbium-doped YAG lasers to generate wavelength-tunable femtosecond laser pulses (< 50 fs) in the 20W average power and 100µJ class. These systems can be further frequency-converted down to 200nm in the ultraviolet. Most powerful nonlinear multi-pass cell (MPC) compressors can handle more than 200W of average power and millijoules of pulse energy with pulse durations of below 50fs at 1030nm. Further, Class 5 Photonics builds high-brilliance extreme ultraviolet (XUV) sources for photoelectron spectroscopy, attosecond science and semiconductor metrology. The talk will demonstrate recent developments in these fields, including ultrafast laser systems towards the kilowatt power level and XUV systems surpassing microwatt average powers. In particular, Class 5 Photonics developed the most powerful 2 micrometer laser on the market: THORA, A Thulium-pumped Holmium-doped YLF amplifier system, delivering more than 100mJ pulse energy at 1kHz repetition rate and 2.5ps pulse duration. The talk will also cover how these new powerful mid-infrared picosecond lasers will be used for pumping longer wavelength OPCPA-systems operating at 5 or even 9µm wavelength. This will enable millijoule-class seed lasers for ultrafast, terawatt-scale CO2 lasers.