A terawatt Nd:glass chirped pulse amplification laser system seeded by two order optical parametric amplification

Abstract

We present the performance of a high-power Nd:glass laser system, which produces a 1.1 J, 250 fs, 7.3 nm broadband laser pulse based on the combination of optical parametric amplification (OPA) and chirped pulse amplification (CPA). The two-stage OPA provides broadband seed pulses for the three-stage Nd:glass amplifiers based on the technology of CPA. Compared to the conventional oscillator seed source, the most important advantage of such a seed source supplied by the two-stage OPA is that it possesses the capacities of broad bandwidth and high energy.