Abstract

Many groups around the world are involved in development of high peak power 100 fs laser systems. One technique common to most of these systems is chirped pulse amplification in broad gain–bandwidth solid state laser materials. Our system begins with a commercially available, actively started, self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire oscillator that is pumped by 9.2 W of all lines argon ion laser light. The 100 fs, 800 nm, 12 nJ pulses from this oscillator are then stretched in a double pass, antiparallel grating pair stretcher. The resulting 450 ps, 3 nJ pulses are then amplified to 10 mJ in a Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier pumped by 60 mJ of doubled Nd:YAG light. The pulses are then further amplified in a double pass Ti:sapphire rod that is pumped by a 550 mJ pulse from the same Nd:YAG laser. Further amplification has been performed in dye converted flashlamp pumped Ti:sapphire, laser pumped Ti:sapphire, and flashlamp pumped Cr:LiSAF. In all three cases, pulses have been recompressed to peak powers in excess of 1 TW. Performance of these amplifiers as well as issues pertaining to recompression, propagation, and focusability will be discussed.

© 1992 Optical Society of America