Grating shaker for carrier-envelope phase stabilization

Most schemes for generating isolated attosecond pulses require the carrier-envelope phase of the driving lasers being stabilized. We discovered that the carrier-envelope phase of the pulses from a chirped pulse amplifier is susceptible to the variation of grating separation in optical stretchers and compressors. This effect was used to stabilize and control the carrier-envelope phase through an independent feedback loop. Our invention is licensed to Femtolasers Produktions GmbH. We are now working on increasing the power of the CE phase locked laser and on improving the locking and measurement accuracy.

Chengquan Li, Eric Moon, and Zenghu Chang, “Carrier-envelope phase shift caused by variation of grating separation,” Optics Letters 31, 3113 (2006).

Eric Moon, He Wang, Steve Gilbertson, Hiroki Mashiko and Zenghu Chang, “Advances in Carrier-Envelope Phase Stabilization of Grating-Based Chirped-Pulse Lasers,” Laser and Photonics Reviews 4, 160 (2009).

Zenghu Chang, Fundamentals of Attosecond Optics, CRC Press; 1 edition (February 16, 2011) ISBN-10: 1420089374