Continuum laser media

[kecked]

Anyone know a reasonable cost source for structured media for continuum? I need to pump it to make a continuum but I need enough power after the shift to shg to the UV. Right now I have a tisaph 980-800. So I can reach 490-400. But I’d like to get 600-400 but still have enough power for shg. Right now I get 150fs 80 MHz pulses with avg power 1W after a pulse picker and the pulse after shg to the visible is not enough when wavelength selected to double again to the UV. Nor deep enough in the visible to get lower UV values. We are looking for molecular resonance so the way we work is hit the material with the visible and look for the shg signal. But if I don’t have enough juice it can’t work. I have a nice coherent dual jet dye but it’s messy and hard to align. It is however 2fs but only 30mw avg at 8 MHz. So I’ve seen continuum lasers that are high power and tunable with short pulses that are based on a kind of hollow glass tube but it’s like 5k for a few inches. Thus looking for alternatives.

 

[RedCowboy]

This guy uses a length of silica core fiber optic cable ( cheap tel-com stuff ), don't know if this is helpful, but I found it interesting.

 

[kecked]

Yea I tried that. Works but not enough power. I think I’m stuck with the dye laser to get enough tunable power to do shg in the visible.

 

[atomd]

Usually you use continuum to generate just seed and then get power from OPA. If you don't mind narrowing the bandwidth to just a few nm and you have Q-switched laser that can be synchronized to mode-locked one then you can do SFG. 532nm + 400 nm gives you deep UV. 532nm + 800nm or 1064 + 400nm gives you closer UV.

 

[kecked]

I don’t have an opa but you’re right. What we are doing is looking for resonances in materials so we sweep a narrow wavelength tighter better until we find shg. Note it and move on. Then come back and narrow in as tight as we can to peak it. We expect uw of shg from this or nothing at all. So,we use a pmt after a monochromator. Would be nice if the continuum alone had the juice all across the visible so we could just pick up the resulting spectrum but I doubt that’s possible. I’d need like a 150fs 50mw avg power pulse across the spectrum is a high power chirp. Well so far I have the Mira running and a pulse picker. So now to get the bbo setup and see if I can double into the Uv at all. Alignment, angle, temp are going be critical….literally! ( phase matching haha pun intended)