Abstract
More than 20 years after the first presentation of optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA), the technology has matured as a powerful technique to produce high-intensity, few-cycle, and ultrashort laser pulses. The output characteristics of these systems cover a wide range of center wavelengths, pulse energies, and average powers. The current record performance of table-top, few-cycle OPCPA systems are 16 TW peak power and 22 W average power, which show that OPCPA is able to directly compete with Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification-based systems as source for intense optical pulses. Here, we review the concepts of OPCPA and present the current state-of-the art performance level for several systems reported in the literature. To date, the performance of these systems is most generally limited by the employed pump laser. Thus, we present a comprehensive review on the recent progress in high-energy, high-average-power, picosecond laser systems, which provide improved performance relative to OPCPA pump lasers employed to date. From here, the impact of these novel pump lasers on table-top, few-cycle OPCPA is detailed and the prospects for next-generation OPCPA systems are discussed.
Highlights
Ultrafast laser amplification was revolutionized in 1985 when chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) was introduced.[1]
Shirakawa et al reported in 1998 on a compact noncollinear optical parametric amplification (NOPA) system amplifying pulses with 5 μJ pulse energy and 6.2 fs duration at 630 nm or 8.4 fs at 1.1 μm, respectively,[34] and Kobayashi and Shirakawa presented in 2000 sub-5-fs pulses.[35]
Since most of these pioneering few-cycle optical parametric amplifier (OPA) implementations were driven by Ti:sapphire-based CPA systems with mJ-level pulse energy and kilohertz repetition rate, the generated few-cycle pulses were limited to the 100 μJ and 0.1 W average power-level
Summary
Ultrafast laser amplification was revolutionized in 1985 when chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) was introduced.[1] In CPA, the low-energy sub-1-ps pulses from an ultrafast oscillator are stretched in time to several hundred picoseconds or few nanoseconds The energy of these pulses is increased in consecutive amplifier stages to the millijoule(mJ) or even joule-level, while the peak power remains below the threshold of optical damage and pulse distortion in the amplifiers. The records in terms of peak power [16 TW (Ref. 17)] and average power [22 W (Ref. 13)] indicate that the OPCPA method has matured to a performance level comparable to Ti:sapphire-based CPA systems, with the advantage of shorter pulse durations and wavelength tunability from the visible to mid-IR range. The section concludes with a detailed discussion of the performance of representative OPCPA systems and their pump lasers
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