Abstract

Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) technology is one the main and most promising source of femtosecond high peak power light pulses. One of the biggest challenges in OPCPA laser system creation is the development of a pump source for the parametric amplifier. Pumping the parametric amplifier with pulses of ~10-20 ps in duration might be the optimal choice as it combines relatively high peak intensity of the pump pulse, allowing the usage of short parametric crystals, and relatively short duration of the signal pulse, providing easier pulse compression at the end. This pump pulse duration also makes it less sensitive to time jittering of seed and pump pulses as compared to ~1 ps pump pulses achieved in Yb doped active medium based chirped pulse amplifiers (CPA). Therefore, the complexity of the task of achieving TW-level signal pulses at the output of the OPCPA system is reduced.

© 2015 IEEE