Abstract

Increasing demand for ultrashort light pulses at wavelengths not supported by lasing media led to the intense research on optical parametric amplifiers (OPA’s) in the past few decades which resulted in development of OPA’s that can produce broadly tunable femtosecond pulses for various applications. Certain scientific disciplines, however, require high intensity light pulses and since high power ultrashort pulses could not be amplified directly in an OPA, different approaches had to be considered. The technique which allows achieving high intensity pulses is called optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA). It is similar to the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) concept proposed for the high energy lasers just with the laser amplifiers being replaced by OPA.

© 2011 Optical Society of America