Regular Article

Achromatic dual-waveplate for inline two color high-order harmonic generation

¹ Department of Physics, Lund University, PO Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
² Bernhard Halle Nachfolger GmbH, Hubertusstraße 10, 12163 Berlin, Germany

^a e-mail: neven.ibrakovic@fysik.lth.se

Received: 15 December 2017
Received in final form: 12 April 2018
Published online: 7 September 2018

Abstract

We propose a design of an achromatic dual-waveplate intended to align the polarization of orthogonal two-color pulses in an inline configuration. The waveplate acts as a half-waveplate for pulses with a carrier wavelength of 1300 nm over a bandwidth of 300 nm. For the second harmonic of the pulses the waveplate acts as a full-waveplate, centered at 650 nm with a bandwidth of 100 nm. By experimentally measuring the transmission of this optic when placed between two parallel linear polarizers we show that the polarization directions are aligned as expected. This experiment is then verified by calculating the transmission through the optic using Jones calculus. This waveplate could be useful in two-color experiments with few-cycle pulses, or pulses with a tunable wavelength, that need to be aligned with their second harmonics.