Design of a sub-13-fs, multi-gigawatt chirped pulse optical parametric amplification system

We present a design for phase-locked chirped pulse optical parametric amplification of ultra-short pulses based on Ti:sapphire. A realistic description is given by measuring the oscillator pulse (11.6 fs, 4 nJ) with SPIDER and numerically propagating it through the whole chirped pulse amplification system. The interaction is modeled with a full three-dimensional code and compression is ray-trace optimized to yield 12.7-fs, 98-μJ pulses with 1 mJ of pump energy. The design is scalable in energy (e.g. 1 mJ with 10-mJ pump) and is exclusively based on commercially available components .

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