Practical 24-fs, 1-μJ, 1-MHz Yb-fiber laser amplification system

We develop a practical femtosecond polarization-maintaining fiber laser amplification system with a standard double-cladding fiber technique, enabling 24-fs transform-limited pulses with 1-mu J pulse energy at a 1-MHz repetition rate. The laser system is based on a hybrid amplification scheme. Chirped-pulse amplification is employed in the pre-amplifier stage to supply high-quality pulses with enough energy for the main-amplifier, where nonlinear amplification is utilized to broaden the output spectrum. To obtain a dechirped pulse with high quality and short duration, a pre-shaper is inserted between the two amplification stages to adjust the pre-chirp, central wavelength, and pulse energy of the signal pulses in the main amplifier for optimizing pulse evolution. As a result, temporal pedestal free sub-ten-cycle high-energy laser pulses can be routinely obtained. In the end, the advantages of this novel laser source are demonstrated in the experiments on enhanced damage effect to cells co-cultured with gold nanorods. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America