Program

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Plenary speakers

Oscar E. Martínez, Photonics Laboratory, Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Title: Revisiting compressors after 40 years to rescue the terms disappeared.

Abstract: The year 1983 gave birth of the prism compressor and made us aware that spectral angular dispersion gives rise to group delay dispersion. I will review the origins and evolution during the hot 80’s and will discuss why and which terms, that give rise to relevant effects, were disappeared. After rescuing those terms, the concept of compression surface and arrival time dispersion will be presented to society and possible applications such as traveling wave pumping will be discussed.

About the speaker: Born in Buenos Aires on 1953. Professor at Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is Fellow of Optica (former OSA) and has been associate member of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Worldwide recognized for his contributions to ultrafast optics, for the invention of the prism compressor and the Martínez Compressor. The work became a milestone in pulse shaping and is cited directly as “prism pair compressor” or “Prism compressor” without referring to the paper. He pioneered in ultrashort pulse measurement and Chirped Pulse Amplification. He is also the coauthor with Sandra Martínez of the SUPPOSe method that overcomes the ill posed deconvolution problem, allowing standard microscope images to be super-resolved by mathematical processing.

Ursula Keller, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Title: Dual-comb modelocked diode-pumped solid-state and semiconductor lasers

Abstract: We have invented two new methods for multiplexing a single laser cavity to support a pair of noise-correlated, yet cavity length independent optical frequency combs. They are based on either polarization multiplexing with an intracavity birefringent crystal or spatial laser cavity multiplexing by inserting a monolithic device with two separate angles on the surface, such as a biprism. The two cavity modes share all intracavity components and take a near-common path, but do not overlap on any active elements. With a SESAM we passively modelocked both independent modes and obtain dual-comb operation. We demonstrated this with both diode-pumped Yb-doped solid-state lasers and semiconductor lasers using the MIXSEL technology. The high-Q cavity allows for record-low noise performance. Most recently we have demonstrated a 80-MHz diode-pumped Yb:CaF2 laser delivering more than 2.4 Watts of average power per comb with sub-140 fs pulses centered at 1052 nm. We reach sub-cycle relative timing jitter of 2.2 fs [20 Hz, 100 kHz] which is a major milestone in single-cavity dual-comb laser development. With the spatial biprism multiplexing technique, we could implement slow feedback on the repetition rate difference frep, enabling this quantity to be drift-free, low-jitter, and adjustable over a large range – a key combination for practical applications that was lacking in many other single-cavity dual-comb systems. We could obtain record-level short- and long-term stability of (frep)/frep = 1.8 in [20 Hz, 100 kHz] and 2.3 (frep)/frep long-term stability over more than 5 hours (with a frequency counter). This translates to sub-cycle relative timing jitter and thus is a major step forward in the development of single-cavity dual-comb lasers. Such lasers will have a great potential to revolutionize how any normal pump-probe measurements and optical spectroscopy are implemented.

About the speaker: Ursula Keller has been a tenured professor of physics at ETH Zurich since 1993 (www.ulp.ethz.ch) and also a director of the Swiss multi-institute NCCR MUST program in ultrafast science since 2010 (www.nccr-must.ch). She received the Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1989 and the Physics “Diplom” from ETH in 1984. She was a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1989 to 1993, a “Visiting Miller Professor” at UC Berkeley 2006 and a visiting professor at the Lund Institute of Technologies 2001. She has been a co-founder and board member for Time-Bandwidth Products (acquired by JDSU in 2014) and for a venture capital funded telecom company GigaTera (acquired by Time-Bandwidth in 2003). She was a member of the research council of the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2014-2018. She is the founding president of the ETH Women Professors Forum (WPF).

The focus of her group (foto) in research is exploring and pushing the frontiers in ultrafast science and technology (online info). Awards include the OSA Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize (2020) – OSA’s (resp. OPTICA’s) highest award for overall distinction in optics, SPIE Gold Medal (2020) – SPIE’s highest honor, IEEE Edison Medal (2019), European Inventor Award for lifetime achievement (2018), two ERC advanced grants (2012 and 2018), member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, German Academy Leopoldina and Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences. She supervised and graduated 89 Ph.D. students (list), published >490 journal publications (list) and according to Google Scholar an h-index of 115 with more than 50000 citations.

Katsumi Midorikawa, RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics, Tokyo, Japan

Title: The third generation table-top attosecond light sources

Abstract: Research on attosecond pulses changed substantially around 2010. Before then, the Ti:sapphire laser was the de facto standard as the driving light source, so the cutoff energy was limited to ~100 eV and the repetition rate was of the order of 1 kHz. After 2010, Mid-IR OPA, which brings the advantages of extending the cutoff and increasing the repetition rate, became the mainstream driving source. Owing to the quadratic dependence of the cutoff energy on the driving wavelength, the harmonic photon energy was extended to over 300 eV by using an OPA, reaching the water-window spectral region. However, the increase in driving wavelength results in a substantial decrease in conversion efficiency. To improve the low photon flux associated with low conversion efficiency, novel attempts to optimize the driving laser pulse waveform and increase the driving laser energy and repetition rate have been pursued. We have developed the third generation table-top attosecond light sources, which allow a remarkable increase in photon flux of attosecond pulses in the soft x-ray region by shaping the driver pulse field.

About the speaker: Katsumi Midorikawa received Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Engineering, Keio University, Japan, in 1983. He joined Laser Science Research Group in RIKEN in 1983 and became a Chief Scientist of Laser Technology Laboratory in 1997. He is currently Director of RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics and a leader of Attosecond Science Research Team. His research interests include ultrafast intense lasers, nonlinear optics and their applications to ultrafast phenomena, laser microprocessing, and multiphoton spectroscopy. He recently focuses his research on attosecond pulse generation and metrology. He is a Fellow of IEEE, Optical Society of America, American Physical Society, Japan Society of Applied Physics, and the Laser Society of Japan.

Invited speakers

Amit Agrawal, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

Title: Arbitrary Space-time Wave Packets Synthesis

Anne-Lise Viotti, DESY/Lund University, Germany/Sweden

Title: Compact multi-pass spectral broadening schemes for XUV pulse generation

Arûnas Varanavicius, Vilnius University, Lithuania

Title: Optical parametric amplification: from fundamental concepts to extreme light sources

Christoph Heyl, DESY, Germany

Title: Opportunities for ultrafast lasers and nonlinear optics opened by multi-pass cells

Derryck Reid, Heriot Watt University, UK

Title: Diode-pumped GHz Ti:sapphire and Yb:ceramic lasers for space and astronomy applications

Emily Sistrunk Link, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, USA

Title: Technologies for High-Energy High-Average-Power Lasers

Francesca Calegari, Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, DESY, University of Hamburg, Germany

Title: Sub-2fs UV pulses for ultrafast electron-driven chiral switching

Haochen Tian (Kaoru Minoshima), The University of Electro-Communications, Japan

Title: Dual-comb spectroscopy using free-running combs with digital phase correction

Hoang Nguyen, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, USA

Title: Advancements in High Fluence Multilayer Dielectric Gratings for Ultrafast Lasers

Jacob Khurgin, John Hopkins University, USA

Title: Linewidth and Bandwidth of the QCL Frequency Comb with Arbitrary Temporal Profile

Jakub Drs, Universitéde Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Title: Towards a single-stage 100-eV HHG source

Jeff Moses, Cornell University, USA

Title: Achieving High Quantum Efficiency Parametric Amplification via Hybridized Nonlinear Optics

Jens Limpert, University Jena, Germany

Title: CEP-stable few-cycle high power fiber lasers

Katalin Varju, ELI-ALPS, Hungary

Title: Recent results with ELI ALPS ultrafast lasers

Oleg Pronin, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany

Title: Free-space quasi-phase matching in multipass cells

Peter Schunemann, BAE Systems, USA

Title: New nonlinear crystals for ultrafast frequency conversion in the mid-infrared

Reinhard Kienberger, Technical University of Munich, Germany

Title: New results in attosecond metrology powered by artificial intelligence

Spencer Jolly, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Title: Advances in spatio-temporal pulse characterization

Tara Fortier, NIST, USA

Title: stabilized femtosecond mode-locked lasers for precise frequency and phase comparison of atomic clocks

Tentative schedule at a glance

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