Fiber parametric chirp-matched amplification

Efficient, robust, and low-cost fiber sources of high energy ultrashort pulses of light are challenging to develop at wavelengths where established fiber gain media are unavailable. While fiber optic parametric chirped-pulse amplification can in principle efficiently transfer high energies from an effective pump source to a much wider range of wavelengths, optimal phase matching between chirped ultrashort pulses is challenging to achieve, and practical implementation often results in suboptimal conversion efficiencies and low energies. In this work, we demonstrate record energy and photon conversion efficiencies corresponding to >50% total pump photon conversion with a fiber parametric chirped-matched amplification (FPCMA) approach in which phase matching is achieved independently at every point in time in overlapping stretched pump and signal pulses. High energy pump pulses from a Yb-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplifier at 1035 nm are efficiently converted to 1300 nm through the appropriate design of the relative chirps of the two optical fields, resulting in MW peak power. Performance is validated by nonlinear fiber experiments as well as nonlinear microscopy. In addition to a detailed design guide for translating this approach to other wavelengths, a comprehensive exploration of the performance dependence on important system parameters is described. FPCMA is an efficient approach toward generating high peak power sources at previously inaccessible wavelengths in a fiber platform.