Abstract

High field laser technology based on Ti:sapphire has reached 100 TW-power level.^1,2 Exploring frontiers of the high field science requires precision control of the spatial and temporal quality of the laser pulse as well as sufficient repetition rate and reliability. Recently, we embarked on the development of high contrast high field laser with output power exceeding 100 TW³—and up to 1 PW. To this end we developed high energy large mode regenerative amplifier and demonstrated a terawatt scale laser built on a single amplifier.⁴ Use of this regenerative amplifier in a multistage laser provides benefits of fewer numbers of amplifiers, thus simplifying the system and preserving beam quality, and also improved contrast.⁵

© 2002 Optical Society of America