High gain amplification for femtosecond optical vortex with mode-control regenerative cavity

Ultra-intense femtosecond vortex pulses can provide an opportunity to investigate the new phenomena with orbital angular momentum (OAM) involved in extreme cases. This paper reports a high gain optical vortex amplifier for intense femtosecond vortex pulses generation. Traditional regeneration amplifiers can offer high gain for Gaussian mode pulses but cannot amplify optical vortex pulses while maintaining the phase singularity because of mode competition. Here, we present a regeneration amplifier with a ring-shaped pump. By controlling the radius of the pump, the system can realize the motivation of the Laguerre–Gaussian [LG0,1(−1)] mode and the suppression of the Gaussian mode. Without seeds, the amplifier has a donut-shaped output containing two opposite OAM states simultaneously, as our prediction by simulation. If seeded by a pulse of a topologic charge of 1 or −1, the system will output an amplified LG0,1(−1) mode pulse with the same topologic charge as the seed. To our knowledge, this amplifier can offer the highest gain as 1.45×106 for optical vortex amplification. Finally, we obtain a 1.8 mJ, 51 fs compressed optical vortex seeded from a 2 nJ optical vortex.