Long-term carrier-envelope-phase-stable few-cycle pulses by use of the feed-forward method

Abstract

The feed-forward technique has recently revolutionized carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization, enabling unprecedented values of residual phase jitter. Nevertheless, its demonstrations have hitherto remained in a proof-ofprinciple state. Here we show that pulse quality and power issues can be solved, leading to few-cycle pulses with good beam quality. Making use of stable interferometers, we achieve day-long CEP-stable operation of the setup. Out-of-loop RMS phase noise amounts to less than 30 mrad in 20 s, with more than 24 h of CEP-locked operation being demonstrated. © 2012 Optical Society of America.