Strong and weak seeded four-wave mixing in stretched gas-filled hollow capillary fibers

We report a remarkably efficient experimental scheme for the generation of high energy ultra-short pulses by means of four-wave mixing in long stretched hollow capillary fibers filled with helium. We thoroughly investigate the role of strong and weak seeding fields in a degenerate up-conversion scheme to the deep ultraviolet. In the weak seed regime we demonstrate the tunable emission of up to 30 μJ in ultrashort pulses (~8 fs) in the 250-300 nm range, corresponding to pump energy conversion of up to 30%, from pump pulses with energies readily available from high-average power lasers. In the strong seed regime, we obtain higher pump conversion efficiencies, up to 42%, together with a spectral bandwidth supporting few femtosecond pulses and a record high deep-ultraviolet pulse energy exceeding 70 μJ. The energy can be further scaled by using stretched hollow-core fibers with larger core diameters.