Double chirped-pulse-amplification laser: a way to clean pulses temporally

Abstract

We demonstrate a double chirped-pulse-amplification (CPA) Ti: sapphire laser system that includes two CPA stages with intermediate nonlinear temporal pulse filtering. The method makes it possible to reduce substantially the background of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), including prepulses and postpulses. An ASE temporal contrast of 10(10) was demonstrated at 20 mJ of output energy and 50-fs pulse duration. The demonstrated scheme is applicable to petawatt power-level laser systems.