Resources

Our group recently acquired a new Coherent Chameleon Vision-S ultrafast laser oscillator, providing us a few watts of light from 690nm to 1050nm. Unlike many other Titanium:Sapphire lasers, the Vision-S is a turnkey system that requires no tweaking and tuning to provide us 80MHz rep-rate, sub-100fs pulses anywhere across its spectrum. The Vision-S also provides variable compression to manage dispersion issues that would otherwise require tedious adjustment of a prism or compressor. We intend to extend our spectral coverage using SHG, and have made very preliminary plans to build an amplifier for high power applications including running an OPO.

Our Ti:Sapph is currently mounted on a standard optical table while we prepare to move it to a custom table built from two 18” TMC tables arranged with a geometry that we expect will help suppress acoustic vibrations across the sweet spot of the table. This custom table system will be floated on pneumatic legs to isolate our experiment from noise coupled in through the floor – our lab is located on grade, but we’re interested in obtaining a high degree of passive stability for our interferometric measurements

Spectral measurements can be performed using an Horiba 550mm, multi-grating imaging spectrometer with Synapse CCD camera. A Cryo Industries of America no-motion cryostat system provides us the ability to conduct measurements at both LN2 and liquid Helium temperatures – down to 4K. Two Physik Instrumente precision stages with 2nm minimum incremental step size are used for precision motion control. We have an SRS lock-in amplifier for a broad range of common laboratory measurements, and an extensive suite of RF, optical, and optomechanical parts.