We present a concept of a white-light-seeded-cascaded mid-infrared (mid-IR) optical parametric amplifier (OPA) based on potassium titanyl arsenate and zinc germanium phosphate nonlinear optical crystals and producing 100-μJ level pulses centered at 5300 nm, with the spectrum supporting four-optical-cycle pulse duration. The OPA is pumped by 2090-nm master oscillator/power amplifier based on a Tm,Ho-fiber laser seeder and a Ho:YAG regenerative amplifier delivering 3.8-mJ sub-ps pulses at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. We validate that output parameters of the OPA are scalable by means of increasing the pulse energy, decreasing the pulse duration and redshifting the central wavelength.

Optics Letters Vol. 41, p. 930 (2016)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.41.000930