Interferometric carrier-envelope phase stabilization for ultrashort pulses in the mid-infrared

Abstract: We demonstrate an active carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization scheme for optical waveforms generated by difference-frequency mixing of two spectrally detuned and phase-correlated pulses. By performing ellipsometry with spectrally overlapping parts of two co-propagating near-infrared generation pulse trains, we stabilize their relative timing to 18 as. Consequently, we can lock the CEP of the generated mid-infrared (MIR) pulses with a remaining phase jitter below 30 mrad. Employing these pulses for high-harmonic generation in a bulk semiconductor validates our technique. This experiment reveals that our method also stabilizes the energy of the MIR pulses, thereby approaching the intrinsic stability of the underlying laser system.