Ultrafast Laser Science
Ultrafast sources of laser light continue revolutionizing our understanding of nature on the timescales of the atomic and molecular processes of matter.
Direct control over the electric field waveform of an intense and ultrashort laser pulse has enabled the field of attoscience that depends on electron recollision driven by laser fields stronger than the binding field within an atom. Strong field physics directly benefits from frontier research on light source development.
Our group is a leader in laser science and we have, for instance, pioneered CEP-preserving OPCPA which is the prime technique currently being employed worldwide for the next generation of ponderomotively shifted attosecond and x-ray light sources.
Our current focus is on few-cycle and CEP-stable intense sources at high repetition rates beyond the kHz, thereby pushing the limits of average laser power. These sources range from the UV to mid-IR region of the spectrum, they operate with unprecedented average power, encompass cryogenic helium cooling, pulse shaping and various solid-state and fiber-based technologies.
Our latest innovations include a sub-3-cycle and CEP stable OPCPA system at 160 kHz, which reaches 0.2 PW/cm2 intensities with unsurpassed stability and reliability of < 0.5% over 20h. This system enables the mid-IR for experiments across various fields in physics. Recently, we have demonstrated the generation of coherent bandwidth without gap from 300 nm to 40,000 nm and brightness up to 6 orders of magnitude above a synchrotron light source.