Abstract

Chirped pulse amplification based on Ti:sapphire has become a reliable method for producing-100-fs terawatt pulses.^1,2 The large gain bandwidth of Ti:sapphire is capable of amplifying pulses of much shorter duration. Recently, pulses of the order of 20 fs have been produced from Ti:sapphire oscillators.^3,4 Amplification of these pulses to the ferawatt level will require careful consideration and control of material dispersion and pulse distortion due to refractive focusing elements. In this paper, we present the design of an amplification system in which any cubic and quartic phase distortion of the pulse are eliminated. The system is based entirely on reflective optics and should be capable of producing multi-terawatt pulses of less than 20 fs in duration.

© 1993 Optical Society of America