Graduate Exam Abstract

Abstract: This thesis presents the development of a high-energy few-cycle laser beamline designed for investigating the interaction of few-cycle laser pulses with materials, including ordered nanostructures. To achieve the increased spectral bandwidth necessary to generate few-cycle (sub-10 fs) pulses, broadening and post-compression is performed utilizing a hollow-capillary fiber (HCF) filled with helium gas. A >2 TW peak power is achieved with 6.9 fs duration pulses at 15 mJ, which results in a relativistic focused intensity of 6.5x10^18 W/cm^2. Additionally, to the authors best knowledge, this result is the highest peak power achieved utilizing stretched flexible HCFs (SF-HCFs) and is the first to utilize a 1 mm bore diameter SF-HCF in the 800 nm wavelength range. The broadening stage is also run in an uncommon reverse gradient mode, generally only utilized for resonant dispersive wave emission/propagation. Exceptional day to day throughput of 87% is achieved. In preparation for experiments and applications, plasma diagnostics were developed (electron kinetic energy spectrometer and x-ray spectrometer) to characterize the laser-matter interactions. A laser contrast enhancement relying on the cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation nonlinearity is in progress, and future peak power upgrades to 5 TW and 10 TW are being considered.

Adviser: Jorge Rocca
Co-Adviser: N/A
Non-ECE Member: Dylan Yost, Physics
Member 3: Randy Bartels, ECE
Addional Members: N/A

Publications:
A. R. Meadows, K. Yamamoto, F. Szlafsztein, V. Chvykov, C. S. Menoni, B. Schmidt, and J. J. Rocca, "1.5 TW High-Energy, Few-Cycle Beamline for Relativistic Laser-Matter Interactions," in Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science 2024 (FiO, LS), Technical Digest Series (Optica Publishing Group, 2024), paper FTh1E.2.

Alexander R. Meadows, Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Ivan Graumann, Francisco Szlafsztein, Vladimir Chvykov, Reed Hollinger, C. Aparajit, Ze’ev Shpilman, Owen Geiss, Pedram Abdolghader, Bruno E. Schmidt, and Jorge J. Rocca, "Fifteen millijoule, few-cycle pulse compression using a large-bore hollow fiber for relativistic laser–matter interactions," Opt. Lett. 50, 3313-3316 (2025)

Program of Study:
ECE502
ECE503
ECE504
ECE506
ECE523
ECE541
ECE546
ECE574, ECE604