Abstract

Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification is a unique tool for amplification of ultra-broadband pulses to highest energies. The feasibility to reach terawatt peak power levels with sub-10-fs pulses lias already been demonstrated [13]. Recently we reached compression of 80 mJ ultrabroadband pulses to a duration of 8.5-fs with our system using a combined grism-stretcher and specially designed third order dispersion compensating chirped mirrors. The system is described in reference [3]. Unfortunately the temporal contrast that can be reached with this 3-stage OPCPA system is only 4-5 orders of magnitude from the pulse peak to the superfluorescence pedestal. To this end we plan to implement a stronger seed source which delivers μJ -level seed pulses with excellent temporal contrast.

© 2007 IEEE