Generation of 18-fs, multiterawatt pulses by regenerative pulse shaping and chirped-pulse amplification.

Transform-limited, 18-fs pulses of 4.4-TW peak power are produced in a Ti:sapphire-based chirped-pulsed amplification system at a repetition rate of 50 Hz. Regenerative pulse shaping is used to control gain narrowing during amplification, and an optimized, quintic-phase-limited dispersion compensation scheme is used to control higher-order phase distortions over a bandwidth of ~100 nm. Seed pulses are temporally stretched >100,000 times before amplification.

[1]  Michael D. Perry,et al.  Design and performance of a multiterawatt, subpicosecond neodymium:glass laser , 1990 .

[2]  B. Lemoff,et al.  Multiterawatt 30-fs Ti:sapphire laser system. , 1994, Optics letters.

[3]  M M Murnane,et al.  Amplification of 26-fs, 2-TW pulses near the gain-narrowing limit in Ti:sapphire. , 1995, Optics letters.

[4]  G. Mourou,et al.  Terawatt Ti:sapphire laser with a spherical reflective-optic pulse expander. , 1995, Optics letters.

[5]  Gerard Mourou,et al.  Compression of amplified chirped optical pulses , 1985 .

[6]  Gordon,et al.  High-order harmonic generation using intense femtosecond pulses. , 1993, Physical review letters.

[7]  B. Lemoff,et al.  Quintic-phase-limited, spatially uniform expansion and recompression of ultrashort optical pulses. , 1993, Optics letters.

[8]  Jeffrey Bokor,et al.  Short wavelength coherent radiation: generation and applications , 1986 .

[9]  K R Wilson,et al.  Regenerative pulse shaping and amplification of ultrabroadband optical pulses. , 1996, Optics letters.

[10]  J. J. Macklin,et al.  0.5-TW, 125-fs Ti:sapphire laser. , 1991, Optics letters.

[11]  A. Antonetti,et al.  Compact and efficient multipass Ti:sapphire system for femtosecond chirped-pulse amplification at the terawatt level. , 1993, Optics letters.

[12]  R W Falcone,et al.  Multiterawatt, 100-fs laser. , 1991, Optics letters.

[13]  Harris,et al.  MeV x-ray generation with a femtosecond laser. , 1992, Physical review letters.

[14]  G. Mourou,et al.  An alexandrite pumped Nd:glass regenerative amplifier for chirped pulse amplification , 1992 .