Nicolas Forget
Fastlite - forget@fastlite.comN. Forget
The advent of powerful picosecond Ytterbium lasers has removed the long-lasting power bottleneck of ultrashort optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) and opened the path to a large set of applications, among which are the generation of few-cycle optical pulses, high-flux mid- and far-infrared pulses, intense THz fields but also X-UV secondary sources through high-harmonic generation. In this talk I review some recent achievements of white-light-seeded optical chirped-pulse parametric amplifiers (OPCPAs) operating in the infrared up to the thermal wavelengths. I also describe the recent experimental extension of the OPA/OPCPA technology to very high repetition rates (40 MHz) and discuss the potential applications of these ultra-low-noise sources to bio-medical imaging and stellar interferometry.
Nicolas Forget (PhD) is scientific director at Fastlite, a French SME specialized in ultrafast technology.