Temporal contrast enhancement via nonlinear elliptical polarization rotation in a solid thin plate

We demonstrate the simultaneous temporal contrast enhancement and spectral broadening via nonlinear elliptical polarization rotation in a solid thin plate. The efficiency, temporal contrast enhancement, spectral broadening, pulse compression and power stability are experimentally investigated. With this simple and efficient scheme, the temporal cleaned pulses with energy of 325 mu J and total efficiency of 30% are obtained. The temporal contrast and spectral bandwidth of the filtered pulse are 10(11) and 104 nm, respectively. The pulse compressed from 180 fs to 45.8 fs is realized by utilizing chirped mirrors, corresponding to a compression factor of 3.93. With stable output power, presented scheme could be implemented in the ultra-intense femtosecond laser facilities. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement