Filament seeded high-energy IR parametric source with self stabilization of carrier-envelope phase

Summary form only given. In this paper, a scheme for the generation of high-energy, few-optical-cycle, carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) stabilized pulses in the IR around 1.5 mum is realised. The system is driven by a CPA Ti:sapphire laser (50 fs, 120 mJ, 800 nm, 10 Hz). A 0.6-mJ pulse is spectrally broadened by filamentation in a gas cell filled with krypton and compressed by chirped mirrors down to 10 fs. A high-energy passively CEP-stabilized seed is then produced by intra-pulse difference frequency (DF) generation seeded by the broadband continuum of the filament. This seed is then boosted in energy by an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) producing CEP-stabilized pulses with 15-muJ energy. The development of a second high-energy broadband OPA stage will obtain mJ-level few-cycle passively CEP-stabilized IR pulses that will be ideal driver for high order harmonic generation toward the soft-X region and for attosecond pulse generation.