Abstract

In recent years the technique of optical parametric amplification (OPA) has opened up a new path towards generating few-cycle laser pulses with unprecedented peak powers. The main advantage of OPA is that it allows for an extremely broad amplification bandwidth as compared to any known laser amplifier medium. In high-power systems OPA is usually combined with the chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) principle (OPCPA). In such a system pulse energies as high as 35 J were achieved in 84-fs pulses [1]. In the few-cycle regime 10-fs pulses with 90 mJ energy were demonstrated form an OPCPA system [2].

© 2007 IEEE