Hyper-Spectral Sensing with Intense Ultrafast Laser Fields

*** NEW – June 18, 2021

• An attachment has been added. The document contains questions and answers related to the Challenge.

*Please note the ISC Website will be available on June 11, 2021 at 14:00 EDT

This Challenge Notice is issued under the Innovative Solutions Canada Program (ISC) Call for Proposals 003 (EN578-20ISC3). For general ISC information, Bidders can visit the ISC website.

Please refer to the Solicitation Documents which contain the process for submitting a proposal.

Steps to apply:

Step 1: read this challenge

Step 2: read the Call for Proposals

Step 3: propose your solution here

Challenge title: Hyper-Spectral Sensing with Intense Ultrafast Laser Fields

CHALLENGE SPONSOR: National Research Council of Canada (NRC)

Funding Mechanism: Contract

MAXIMUM CONTRACT VALUE:

Multiple contracts could result from this Challenge.

Phase 1:

• The maximum funding available for any Phase 1 contract resulting from this Challenge is : $150,000 CAD excluding applicable taxes, shipping, travel and living expenses, as required.
• The maximum duration for any Phase 1 contract resulting from this Challenge is up to 6 months (excluding submission of the final report).

Estimated number of Phase 1 contracts: 2

Phase 2:

Note: Only eligible businesses that have successfully completed Phase 1 will be invited to submit a proposal for Phase 2.

• The maximum funding available for any Phase 2 contract resulting from this Challenge is : $1,000,000 CAD excluding applicable taxes, shipping, travel and living expenses, as required.
• The maximum duration for any Phase 2 contract resulting from this Challenge is up to 24 months (excluding submission of the final report).

Estimated number of Phase 2 contracts: 1

Note: Selected companies are eligible to receive one contract per phase per challenge.

This disclosure is made in good faith and does not commit Canada to award any contract for the total approximate funding. Final decisions on the number of Phase 1 and Phase 2 awards will be made by Canada on the basis of factors such as evaluation results, departmental priorities and availability of funds. Canada reserves the right to make partial awards and to negotiate project scope changes.

Travel

*Due to Covid-19, the kick-off meeting and final review meeting will have the flexibility of being a video or teleconference due to travel issues and other restrictions.

Kick-off meeting

Ottawa, ON*

Progress review meeting(s)

Teleconference/videoconference

Final review meeting

Ottawa, ON*

All other communication can take place by telephone, videoconference, and WebEx.

Problem Statement

NRC’s Security and Disruptive Technologies (SDT) research center hosts research in the field of strong optical interactions with materials and nanostructures, with applications towards improved sensing. High-intensity femtosecond lasers are required to reach the high-field regime of light-solid interaction. Because NRC utilizes materials with widely different properties and with various length scales (nanoscopic to macroscopic), the laser system must efficiently deliver a unique combination of intense and weak fields over a wide spectral range, from deep-ultraviolet to mid-infrared frequencies, at high repetition rate (100 kHz), and with short pulses. The high repetition rate assures the high-field response of small nano- and atomic-scale materials can be adequately measured; the wide spectral coverage enables pumping and probing of material-specific resonances.

In this challenge, NRC is seeking a femtosecond laser system that operates at a repetition rate of 100 kHz and that, starting from a pump laser with a center wavelength of 1.03 μm and pulse duration of 200 femtoseconds (fs), delivers a minimum of three laser outputs with pulse durations < 100 femtoseconds over wavelengths ranging from the deep-ultraviolet (450 nm) to the far infrared (10 μm). To ensure a sufficiently high intensity can be reached on the solid target, NRC requires μJ-level pulse energies for wavelengths longer than 1 μm.

Desired outcomes and considerations

Essential (mandatory) Outcomes

The solution must:

1. Be compatible with a femtosecond Yb pump laser (LightConversion Carbide CB3) operating at 100 kHz repetition rate, with a center wavelength of 1.03 μm, and with pulse duration of 200 femtoseconds and average power of up to 80W.

2. Output (O1) mid-infrared femtosecond pulses with a wavelength tunable between 2.5 – 10 µm (potentially with a gap between 4 – 4.3 µm), pulse duration less than 100 femtoseconds, and pulse energy of at least 2 μJ, throughout the wavelength range. Wavelengths longer than 4 µm must be Carrier-Envelope-Phase (CEP) stable (passive).

3. Output (O2) near-infrared femtosecond pulses with 10 femtoseconds duration or shorter, at 1.03 µm wavelength, with at least 3 W of power.

4. Output (O3) visible and ultraviolet femtosecond pulses with a wavelength tunable between 450 – 600 nm and pulse duration less than 70 femtoseconds.

5. Have all these outputs available simultaneously.

6. If cooling is required, water-to-air heat exchangers (chillers) must be provided.

7. Operate in laser lab with a temperature of 20°C+/-3°C and 35 % humidity.

8. Occupy no more than 0.6 m x 4 m of table space.

9. Be completely enclosed in appropriate laser-safety containers.

Additional Outcomes

The solution should:

1. Have additional integrated diagnostics, displayed by an integrated software, such as :

• near-infrared cameras and photodiodes to monitor alignment and power of the pump beams.
• near-infrared (< 1.2 μm) spectrometer for monitoring the spectrum of output O2.
• mid-infrared beam profiler covering 2 – 16 µm wavelengths.
• mid-infrared spectrometer, covering at least 2 – 10 µm wavelengths, operating at least at 1 Hz (1spectrum/second).
• Visible-ultraviolet spectrometer to monitor output O3.
• Pulse measurement device (autocorrelator, FROG, …)

2. Allow software selection of the wavelengths of the tunable outputs.

3. Extend the wavelength range of output (O3) to below 450 nm, and between 600 – 850 nm.

4. Provide one additional output (O4) of 35 femtoseconds pulses at a wavelength of 1.03 μm with more than 70 W of power, not simultaneously available with any other output.

5. Provide one additional output (O5) of 50 femtoseconds pulses at a wavelength of 2 μm, with at least 4 W of power, simultaneously available with O1, O2 and O3.

Background and Context

Intense ultrashort laser pulses are uniquely capable of unravelling the properties of materials, especially “quantum materials”, that is those where correlation between the material’s constituent elements determine the material’s advanced function. These materials’ properties often manifest at the nanometer scale all the way up to micrometer and macroscopic scales, as well as across a broad range of light frequencies. Probing these materials requires advanced intense laser sources that operate at high repetition rate (> 100 kHz) and across a large spectral range (from ultraviolet up to mid-infrared).

Femtosecond, high-energy and high-average-power lasers based on Ytterbium technology are ideal pump lasers to develop such multi-frequency platform. These lasers generate intense pulses at a fixed near-infrared wavelength. Frequency conversion is conventionally achieved with nonlinear Optical Parametric Amplification, but the marketed solutions provide only limited spectral coverage. Covering the desired range, spanning the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared, requires fractional solutions, with consequently lower efficiency. We seek a new cohesive technology to meet this challenge.

We anticipate such a laser platform will redefine the state-of-the art will be marketable in the rapidly growing field of ultrafast lasers at large. Aside from obvious interest in physics / engineering or chemistry departments around the world, such a widely tunable system is also relevant to biological and medical research.

ENQUIRIES

All enquiries must be submitted in writing to TPSGC.SIC-ISC.PWGSC@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca no later than ten calendar days before the Challenge Notice closing date. Enquiries received after that time may not be answered.