Open AccessMulti-terawatt chirped pulse optical parametric amplifier with a time-shear power amplification stage
Author(s) -
Paweł Wnuk,
Yuriy Stepanenko,
Czesław Radzewicz
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.17.015264
Subject(s) - optics , barium borate , materials science , chirped pulse amplification , optical parametric amplifier , amplifier , femtosecond , laser , optical amplifier , ultrashort pulse , optoelectronics , physics , cmos
We report on a compact and simple, broadband optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier system that amplifies femtosecond pulses directly from a titanium sapphire oscillator up to 2 TW power. Our system relies on a new technique - time shear - that improves the time overlap between the seed and pump pulses and, thus, improves the efficiency of the power amplification stage pumped with a ns laser. Parametric amplification was achieved in two stages: a multipass, noncollinear geometry preamplifier with a single beta-barium borate crystal, and a power booster stage incorporating three beta-barium borate crystals in the new time-shear design. Both stages were pumped with pulses from a commercial 10 Hz frequency doubled ns Nd:YAG laser. The system delivers 49 mJ pulses with a temporal width of 23 fs and its overall conversion efficiency after pulse compression is 10%.