featured publications – In the frame of collaboration with the group headed by Dr. Martin Schultze, the AMO-group of the Laboratory of Attosecond Physics developed a new laser application of metal-dielectric coatings. By carefully tuning the thickness of the dielectric overcoating, a broad-band phase-shifting metal-dielectric mirror for visible light is demonstrated. Opposed to available achromatic wave plates, which consist of multiple transmissive birefringent plates and therefore often introduce group delay dispersion on the order of multiple tens to hundreds of fs2, the novel optics acts as a quarter-wave plate without introducing group delay dispersion due to its reflective nature. Its capabilities are demonstrated by turning linearly polarized, few-cycle, near-octave spanning visible laser pulses into nearly circularly polarized waveforms without additional dispersion compensation. The mirrors were produced at the Laboratory of Attosecond Physics (AMO group). Ellipsometric measurements were performed by our collaborators from Ruder Boškovic Institute (Zagreb, Croatia). These measurements as well as spectral photometric measurements performed in the AMO group allowed us to carefully characterize Ag and thin Al2O3 films. The mirrors were implemented to the laser setup.
Broadband phase-shifting mirrors for ultrafast lasers
