Molecular Gases for Low Energy Pulse Compression in Hollow Core Fibers

Pulse compression based on non-linear propagation in a gas-filled hollow core fiber (HCF) is amongst the common techniques to generate few-cycle laser pulses [1]. Although very efficient, the major disadvantage of this method is the need to use expensive noble gases like krypton or xenon to compress low energy pulses [2-4]. Our latest results confirm that certain molecular gases, hydrofluorocarbons, represent an affordable and efficient alternative to the traditional atomic gases [5,6]. Such gases bear the potential to generalize HCF compression to high repetition rate, low intensity laser systems [7].