Experimental Facilities

LUPO maintains three clean-room like optics laboratories totalling 150 m^2 of lab-space. Each laboratory has a specific target:

  • One laboratory is dedicated to fundamental high-energy ultrafast optics.
  • One is dedicated to industrial ultrafast light sources at high average power and repetition rate.
  • And one to the application of bright deep-ultraviolet light to healthcare technology.

We currently have five primary laser sources:

  • A Ti:Sapphire oscillator, regenerative amplifier and single-pass amplifier chain (Coherent Legend Elite Duo USX) producing 8.5 mJ, 26 fs, 800 nm pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate. Combined with a TOPAS optical parametric amplifier (Light Conversion) producing 25 fs pulses with up to 1.4 mJ at idler wavelengths as long as 2500 nm. We are adding a booster amplifier to produce 25 mJ pulses at 100 Hz.
  • A Light Conversion Carbide laser, delivering 80 W, 2 mJ, 350 fs pulses, with repetition rates up to 1 MHz at lower energy.
  • An Amplitude Tangor laser, operating at up to 100 W and 0.5 mJ energy with 500 fs pulses. This system can be scaled in repetition rate up to 40 MHz.
  • A Pharos system from Light Conversion producing 200 fs and up to 0.2 mJ of energy, along with 4th and 5th harmonic conversion.
  • A 1 J single-frequency Nd:YAG laser system with up to 4th harmonic output.

Our experimental philosophy tends towards building our own devices and systems rather than buying commercial products. Some examples of instrumentation we have built include:

  • State of the art FROG and XFROG devices, including SHG, SFG and SD devices covering the UV to infrared, and a ptychographic PG-FROG capable of simultaneous measurement from the deep UV (200 nm) to infrared (the broadest spectral bandwidth ever achieved)
  • A vacuum ultraviolet spectrometer covering from 50 nm to 800 nm, which can be operated in a fully calibrated mode to retrieve VUV pulse energies
  • A UV (180 nm) to mid-infrared (10 μm) scanning spectrometer
  • A pulse compression system, providing sub 5 fs pulses at over 1 mJ pulse energy
  • Stretched hollow capillary fibre setups with over 4 m capillary lengths
  • High pressure gas cells and hollow fibre setups which can work up to 150 atmospheres, or at high-vacuum
  • Active laser beam stabilization system
  • Vacuum beam-lines for characterisation and application experiments
  • Pump-probe delay lines for two colour experiments, along with high energy SHG and THG setups