Self-compression of millijoule 1.5 microm pulses.

We demonstrate a four-stage optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification system that delivers carrier-envelope phase-stable approximately 1.5 microm pulses with energies up to 12.5 mJ before recompression. The system is based on a fusion of femtosecond diode-pumped solid-state Yb technology and a picosecond 100 mJ Nd:YAG pump laser. Pulses with 62 nm bandwidth are recompressed to a 74.4 fs duration close to the transform limit. To show the way toward a terawatt-peak-power single-cycle IR source, we demonstrate self-compression of 2.2 mJ pulses down to 19.8 fs duration in a single filament in argon with a 1.5 mJ output energy and 66% energy throughput.

Energy extraction improvement in picosecond amplifiers by pulse tilting.

We report a novel tilted pulse amplification technique that, in contrast with the chirped-pulse amplification method, allows stretching of ultrashort pulses independently upon the initial pulse bandwidth. A gain factor of 4.5 and good reconstruction of a 15 ps pulse after stretching to 200 ps in a double-pass end-pumped Nd:YAG amplifier have been achieved.