Generation of 18-fs, multiterawatt pulses by regenerative pulse shaping and chirped-pulse amplification

Abstract

Transform-limited, 18-fs pulses of 4.4-TW peak power are produced in a Ti:sapphire-based chirped-pulsed amplification system at a repetition rate of 50 Hz. Regenerative pulse shaping is used to control gain narrowing during amplification, and an optimized, quintic-phase-limited dispersion compensation scheme is used to control higher-order phase distortions over a bandwidth of ~100 nm. Seed pulses are temporally stretched >100,000 times before amplification.