Ultrafast rainbow: efficient solid-state source of ultrashort pulses from mid-IR to UV

Summary form only given. Optical parametric amplification (OPA) of white light preserves the phase properties of the white-light continuum. A significant improvement of the OPA system is achieved by using type II phase matching in BBO. Up to 60 % quantum conversion efficiency is achieved in the whole range of tunability. Microjoule energies in 100 fs pulses are achieved in the mid-IR range, opening a new field of strong-field interactions in the spectral range of the vibrational frequencies of the molecules. By using various frequency-mixing schemes, tunable pulses can be achieved from 12 /spl mu/m to 250 nm at kHz repetition rate.