We conduct several experiments to further clarify the formation mechanism of a self-organized void array induced by a single laser beam, including energy-related experiments, refractive-index-contrast-related experiments, depth-related ex- periments, and effective-numerical-aperture experiment. These experiments indicate that the interface spherical aberration is indeed responsible for the formation of void arrays.
We numerically study the pulse compression approaches based on atomic or molecular gases in a hollow-core fiber.From the perspective of self-phase modulation（SPM）, we give the extensive study of the SPM influence on a probe pulse with molecular phase modulation（MPM） effect. By comparing the two compression methods, we summarize their advantages and drawbacks to obtain the few-cycle pulses with micro- or millijoule energies. It is also shown that the double pump-probe approach can be used as a tunable dual-color source by adjusting the time delay between pump and probe pulses to proper values.
We study theoretically the spectral intensity evolutions of the femtosecond Gaussian and parabolic pulses with different initial pulse energies and compare the nonlinear compressions of these pulses based on a meter-long hollow-core fiber filled with neon for different initial pulse durations. The pulses are first coupled into gas-filled hollow-core fiber for spectrum broadening, then compressed by the optimal chirp compensation. The parabolic pulse possesses a shorter pulse duration, larger peak power, and cleaner wings than Gaussian pulse. The properties are useful for compressing the pulses and thus generating the high-energy, short-duration pulses.
We theoretically study the nonlinear compression of picosecond pulses with 10-m J of input energy at the 1053-nm center wavelength by using a one-meter-long gas-filled hollow-core fiber（HCF） compressor and considering the third-order dispersion（TOD） effect. It is found that when the input pulse is about 1 ps/10 m J, it can be compressed down to less than20 fs with a high transmission efficiency. The gas for optimal compression is krypton gas which is filled in a HCF with a 400-μm inner diameter. When the input pulse duration is increased to 5 ps, it can also be compressed down to less than 100 fs efficiently under proper conditions. The results show that the TOD effect has little impact on picosecond pulse compression and the HCF compressor can be applied on compressing picosecond pulses efficiently with a high compression ratio, which will benefit the research of high-field laser physics.
