Abstract

Ultrashort pulse generation and amplification require large gain bandwidth materials. During the last decade a series of such crystalline solid state media have been developed, the most notable ones being titanium-doped sapphire and chromium-doped LISAF. These media have large energy storage capability which, when associated with the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique [1], making them appropriate for the generation of femtosecond terawatt pulses. Nonetheless, up to now such crystals could not be grown in very large size while keeping minimal optical quality. On the other hand amorphous materials such as neodymium-doped glasses have large energy delivery capability but a gain bandwidth limited to typically 20nm.

© 1994 Optical Society of America