Direct amplification of frequency-doubled femtosecond pulses from Ti:Sa laser in photochemically driven XeF(C-A) active media

A new concept of the direct amplification of femtosecond optical pulses in photochemically driven active media, such as Xe2Cl, XeF(C–A) and Kr2F, is discussed with the main emphasis on the XeF(C–A) active medium as one of the most widely studied system. The main advantage of these systems is that they are characterized by a broad gain bandwidths (60–100 nm) which allow to support 10 fsec pulses and are centered in the blue-green region (490, 480 and 420 nm, respectively) spectrally matching to the second harmonic of a Ti:Sa laser. The last circumstance is important from the viewpoint of considerable increasing temporal contrast ratio of ultrahigh peak-power fsec systems.