Tunable femtosecond vacuum UV pulses at a repetition rate of 1 kHz

This work extends the wavelength range of the four-wave mixing (FWM) technique to 170-180 nm using the third-harmonic of a Ti:sapphire laser as the pump and pulses from an optical parametric amplifier pumped by the same Ti:sapphire laser as the idler in the FWM process. By utilizing properly chirped pump and idler pulses, generation of shorter VUV pulses may be possible.