High peak and average power Ti:sapphire thin disk amplifier with extraction during pumping

Abstract

The combination of the extraction during pumping (EDP) amplification scheme and the thin disk (TD) technology has been successfully applied to the Ti:sapphire (Ti:sa) laser medium for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. In a proof-of-principle experiment, we demonstrate high energy broadband amplification in a room temperature water cooled EDP-TD head of stretched femtosecond pulses at a 10 Hz repetition rate, instead of performing a cryogenically cooled traditional multi-pass scheme. Hence, the EDP-TD combination can overcome the limits associated with thermal effects and transverse amplified spontaneous emission, enabling Ti:sa laser systems to have a petawatt peak and hundreds of watts of average power.