Abstract

Originally demonstrated with picosecond pump and seed pulses,¹ chirped pulse optical parametric amplification (CPOPA) turned out to be most effective for energy conversion from powerful nanosecond pump pulses to temporally stretched femtosecond seed pulses.^2–3 CPOPA offers a compact and simpler alternative to regenerative/multipass femtosecond laser amplifiers. Periodically poled ferroelectric crystals seem predestined for application in CPOPA due to the relatively low peak powers. Operation in the near-IR on the other hand results in reduced damage susceptibility for such materials and profits from the availability of suitable pump and seed sources. The two CPOPA configurations employing periodically poled LiNbO₃ (PPLN) demonstrated used a lamp-pumped alexandrite amplifier² and an Yb fiber amplifier³ as pump sources. Pulse durations of 680 fs and 1.6 ps, respectively, were obtained after recompression near 1560 nm and the second system even became commercially available.⁴

© 2002 Optical Society of America