Abstract

Recently, tunable solid-state laser materials have been used extensively for the generation and amplification of fsec optical pulses, and a compact Ti: sapphire laser system producing a peak power of more than one TW has been demonstrated using the chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) technique.¹ To develop such a laser system producing ultrashort, high peak-power optical pulses, Cr:LiSAF is also a promising material. Because of its relatively long upper-state life time (67 µsec) and its absorption spectrum at relatively long wavelength, Cr: LiSAF has an advantage of being readily pumpable with either flash lamps or red laser diodes. The gain spectrum overlapping well with that of Ti:sapphire allows to combine a flash-lamp-pumped Cr: LiSAF laser as a power amplifier with a relatively low-power Ti:sapphire CPA laser system.²

© 1995 IEEE