2016 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2016

Formation of an all–optical extreme–ultraviolet Fresnel zone plate by perturbative high harmonic wavefront control

15 Jun 2016, 10:15

15m

SITE H0104 (University of Ottawa)

Oral (Non-Student) / orale (non-étudiant) Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, Canada / Division de la physique atomique, moléculaire et photonique, Canada (DAMOPC-DPAMPC) W1-9 Nonlinear Optics and High Field Physics (DAMOPC) / Optique non linéaire et physique en champs intenses (DPAMPC)

Speaker

Zhengyan Li (JASLab, National Research Council and University of Ottawa)

Description

High harmonic generation is a non-perturbative nonlinear optical process [1], quite different from conventional perturbative nonlinear optics [2]. These two regimes are bridged by the nonlinear wave mixing process in high harmonic generation [3], in which a harmonic extreme ultraviolet (XUV) photon with frequency Ω is a combination of n1 driving photons with frequency ω1 and n2 perturbing photons with frequency ω2 (Ω=n1ω1+n2ω2) and its intensity scales as I2^n2, where I2 is the perturbing beam intensity. Here we demonstrate a perturbative control scheme to the high harmonic XUV wavefront. To generate an all-optical Fresnel zone plate that focuses the XUV radiation, we intersect the intense driving laser pulse for high harmonic generation, with a tightly focused, weak, control pulse. We use both experiment and simulation to demonstrate the all-optical zone plate. Experimentally, we probe and correct the intrinsic XUV divergence due to the intensity gradient of the driving beam. In addition, SWORD (Spectral Wavefront Optical Reconstruction by Diffraction) [4] measurements quantitatively characterized the zone plate focal spot positions and sizes. Extending beyond our current experiment, simulations predict that by increasing the driving beam size and focusing the perturbing beam more tightly, the zone plate focal spot sizes can reach sub-micrometer dimension resulting in an increase in intensity of 4-6 orders-of-magnitude. The intensity increase that we predict will allow applications such as XUV pump-XUV probe experiments, XUV light monochromation, and XUV nonlinear optics. In addition, the perturbative control concept can be generalized for other versatile all-optical XUV optics besides a zone plate. 1. P. B. Corkum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1994–1997 (1993). 2. R. W. Boyd, Nonlinear Optics (Academic, New York, 2008), 3rd ed. 3. J. B. Bertrand, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 023001 (2011). 4. E. Frumker, et al., Opt. Lett. 34, 3026–3028 (2009).

Presentation materials

zone plate_CAP.pdf

zone plate_CAP.pptx