| Abstract [eng] |
One of the most prominent current trends in ultrafast laser technology is the widespread adoption of lasers based on active media doped with Yb3+ ions. Although these lasers have a lot of advantages, they produce considerably longer pulses than the previous generation Ti:Sapphire lasers, which poses new challenges in certain application fields. The goal of the dissertation was to develop methods for generation of few optical cycle, high peak power pulses with stable carrier-enveloped phase (CEP) in optical parametric amplification systems pumped by Yb:KGW and Nd:YAG lasers. In pursuit of this goal, a special all-optical CEP stabilization setup was developed, and later used in a high average power (53W) optical parametric amplification system producing >5TW peak power, <8fs duration pulses with high temporal contrast and high CEP stability. The remaining part of the dissertation is dedicated to other nonlinear optical techniques which may be useful in developing Yb3+-laser-based systems for applications in strong field physics and spectroscopy: spectral broadening of high-energy infrared pulses in an array of thin transparent plates; infrared pulse self-compression in a crystal with negative nonlinear refraction; development of a source of broadband pulses tunable in the 3-12μm range. |
