Abstract

We have demonstrated the generation of 20 fs duration amplified pulses, with an energy of greater than 30 mJ, a bandwidth of 44 nm, and a repetition rate of 10 Hz, using a chirped-pulse amplification scheme in T:sapphire. We use 11 fs, 0.5 nJ pulses from a Ti:sapphire oscillator¹ as the input for a two-stage Ti:sapphire amplifier. A broadband, low dispersion chirped-pulse stretcher and amplifier design is used for propagation and amplification of the ultrashort pulses.^2,3 By adding a prism pair to the stretcher, both the second and third order dispersions are minimized,⁴ allowing us to generate transform-limited amplified pulses at a duration near the theoretical limit imposed by gain narrowing in Ti:sapphire.

© 1994 Optical Society of America