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Abstract

Coherent ultraviolet light has many uses, for example, in the study of molecular species relevant in biology and chemistry. Very few, if any, laser materials offer ultraviolet transparency along with damage-free operation at high-photon energies and laser power. Here we report efficient generation of narrowband deep and vacuum ultraviolet light using hydrogen-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. Pumping above the stimulated Raman threshold at 532 nm, coherent molecular vibrations are excited in the gas, permitting thresholdless wavelength conversion in the ultraviolet with efficiencies close to 60%. The system is uniquely pressure tunable, allows spatial structuring of the out-coupled radiation, and shows excellent performance in the vacuum ultraviolet. As the underlying scattering process is effectively linear, our approach can also in principle operate at the single-photon level, when all other alternatives are extremely inefficient.