Development of a Pointing and Power Stabilization System for Intense Few-cycle Lasers

We have developed and demonstrated a pointing and power stabilization system for intense few-cycle pulse generation at high repetition rates. The output power from a 1 kHz Ti:sapphire laser system was controlled by the voltage applied to a Pockels cell, and the beam pointing was controlled by a fast analog device composed of a position-sensitive detector and a piezo-driven mirror. As a result, the pointing and power fluctuations were stabilized within 1 µm rms and 0.15% rms, respectively, by feedback control. After spectral broadening inside a hollow fiber for pulse compression, the fluctuations in the output power and spectral intensity were 1.1% rms and 3.5% rms, respectively. Finally, we obtained stable intense few-cycle pulses with an energy of 2.7 mJ and a pulse duration of 5.4 fs.