Abstract

We demonstrate a noncollinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier system that produces 7.6 fs pulses with a peak power of 2 terawatt at 30 Hz repetition rate. Using an ultra-broadband Ti:Sapphire seed oscillator and grating-based stretching and compression combined with an LCD phase-shaper, we amplify a 310 nm wide spectrum with a total gain of 3x10(7), and compress it within 5% of its Fourier limit. The total integrated parametric fluorescence is kept below 0.2%, leading to a pre-pulse contrast of 2 x10(-8) on picosecond timescales.

Highlights

  • The generation of high-intensity few-cycle laser pulses is a subject of great interest [1], as experimental progress in fields such as attosecond science [2] and quantum control [3] is for a large part dependent on the availability of suitable laser sources

  • In this paper we present an NOPCPA system that produces 2 terawatt peak intensity laser pulses with a duration of 2.7 optical cycles (7.6 fs)

  • The system utilizes the full >300 nm gain bandwidth that has been theoretically predicted for a 532 nm pumped NOPCPA system [13, 14] based on BBO (β -barium borate) crystals, while maintaining spectral phase control over this entire bandwidth

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Summary

Introduction

The generation of high-intensity few-cycle laser pulses is a subject of great interest [1], as experimental progress in fields such as attosecond science [2] and quantum control [3] is for a large part dependent on the availability of suitable laser sources. Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) [4, 5] has been demonstrated to be a very promising technique for the production of ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulses [6, 7]. State-of-the-art few-cycle laser sources can deliver sub-3-cycle pulses with an intensity reaching 0.2 TW [15, 16, 17]; our system represents an order of magnitude increase in peak intensity in sub-3-cycle pulse generation, with excellent prospects for further power scaling

Ultra-broadband two terawatt NOPCPA system
30 Hz two-pass Nd:YAG post-amplifier
Spectral phase shaping and few-cycle pulse compression
Pulse contrast measurements
Findings
Conclusions

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