Generation of 10-W average-power, 40-TW peak-power, 24-fs pulses from a Ti:sapphire amplifier system

We developed a compact, three-stage, multipass Ti:sapphire laser amplifier system that generates >40-TW pulses, with 24-fs pulse duration, at a repetition rate of 10 Hz, and with an average power of 10 W. Output intensities in excess of 1×1019 W cm-2 were produced. The technique of frequency-resolved optical gating was used to fully characterize the output pulses and to carefully compare theoretical models with experiment. High dynamic range frequency-resolved optical-gating measurements were performed, for the first time to our knowledge, to characterize the temporal wings of the output pulses.

[1]  H. Kapteyn,et al.  Short-wavelength lasers , 1992, Proc. IEEE.

[2]  Charles G. Durfee,et al.  High power ultrafast lasers , 1998 .

[3]  Ulrich A. Russek,et al.  Pulse compression by use of deformable mirrors. , 1999, Optics letters.

[4]  C. Barty,et al.  Generation of 16-fs, 10-TW pulses at a 10-Hz repetition rate with efficient Ti:sapphire amplifiers. , 1998, Optics letters.

[5]  Y. Nabekawa,et al.  Generation of 13-TW, 26-fs pulses in a Ti:sapphire laser , 1997 .

[6]  Henry C. Kapteyn,et al.  High-Harmonic Generation of Attosecond Pulses in the ``Single-Cycle'' Regime , 1997 .

[7]  M M Murnane,et al.  Ti:sapphire amplifier producing millijoule-level, 21-fs pulses at 1 kHz. , 1995, Optics letters.

[8]  K R Wilson,et al.  Generation of 18-fs, multiterawatt pulses by regenerative pulse shaping and chirped-pulse amplification. , 1996, Optics letters.

[9]  Henry C. Kapteyn,et al.  Design and implementation of a TW-class high-average power laser system , 1998 .

[10]  G. Mourou,et al.  Nonlinear Optics in Relativistic Plasmas and Laser Wake Field Acceleration of Electrons , 1996, Science.

[11]  A. Weiner,et al.  Dispersion-free fiber transmission for femtosecond pulses by use of a dispersion-compensating fiber and a programmable pulse shaper. , 1998, Optics letters.

[12]  I. Christov,et al.  Measurement of 10-fs laser pulses , 1996 .

[13]  Harris,et al.  Demonstration of a 10-Hz, femtosecond-pulse-driven XUV laser at 41.8 nm in Xe , 1995, Physical review letters.

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

[15]  M. Murnane,et al.  Phase-matched generation of coherent soft X-rays , 1998, Science.

[16]  F. Salin,et al.  Generation of 25-TW, 32-fs pulses at 10 Hz. , 1996, Optics letters.

[17]  S. P. Le Blanc,et al.  Laser wakefield excitation and measurement by femtosecond longitudinal interferometry , 1996, Summaries of papers presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics.

[18]  D. Kane,et al.  Characterization of arbitrary femtosecond pulses using frequency-resolved optical gating , 1993 .

[19]  K Yamakawa,et al.  100-TW sub-20-fs Ti:sapphire laser system operating at a 10-Hz repetition rate. , 1998, Optics letters.