IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO.
2, MARCH/APRIL 1998 385
Ultrahigh-Peak and High-Average Power
Chirped-Pulse Amplification of Sub-20-fs
Pulses with Ti:Sapphire Amplifiers
Koichi Yamakawa, Makoto Aoyama, Shinichi Matsuoka, Hiroshi Takuma,
David N. Fittinghoff, and Christopher P. J. Barty, Member, IEEE
(Invited Paper)
Abstract We present the design and performance of an ef-
ficient, ultrashort-duration, ultrahigh-peak power Ti:sapphire
amplifier system that has produced 16-fs pulses with a peak power
of 10 TW at a 10-Hz repetition rate. We also describe present
developmental efforts to extend this system to the 100-TW level
at an average power of 20 W and finally outline the design of
a future system capable of producing petawatt pulses with 20-fs
durations.
Index TermsDispersion control, gain control, high intensity,
laser amplifiers, optical pulse compression, optical pulse shaping,
solid lasers, ultrafast optics.
I. INTRODUCTION
A PPLYING chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) [1] to
broad-band solid-state lasers has allowed the devel-
opment of terawatt picosecond and femtosecond laser systems
[2][11]. While the first generation of CPA systems were based
on Nd:glass amplifiers and generated high energy picosecond
pulses [2][5], the relatively narrow bandwidth of Nd:glass
has limited amplified pulse durations to approximately few
hundred femtoseconds. While Nd:glass amplifiers have good
energy storage and can easily be scaled to large volumes, they
are in general limited to low repetition rates and low-average
power operation because of the poor thermal characteristics
of laser glasses. Nevertheless, subpicosecond multiterawatt
pulses have been produced in Ti:sapphire/Nd:glass hybrid
laser systems [12], [13], and a terawatt laser with a repetition
rate of 1 Hz has been built using a flashlamp-pumped Nd:glass
slab power amplifiers [14].
Using large gain bandwidth materials such as Ti:sapphire
(Ti:Al O ) [15] and Cr:LiSAF [16], however, permits the
amplification of femtosecond pulses [17][23]. Ti:sapphires
gain bandwidth of 230-nm FWHM could in principle support
transform limited pulses of 3 fs. Recently, Jung et al. have
reported the generation of 6.5-fs pulses from a self-mode-
locked Ti:sapphire laser [24]. Ti:sapphire amplifiers have also
Manuscript received March 2, 1998.
K. Yamakawa, M. Aoyama, S. Matsuoka, and H. Takuma are with the
Advanced Photon Research Center, KANSAI Research Establishment, Japan
Atomic Energy Research Institute, Tokai, Ibaraki 319-11, Japan.
D. N. Fittinghoff and C. P. J. Barty are with the Institute for Nonlinear
Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0339 USA.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1077-260X(98)03837-4.
1077260X/98$10.00 1998 IEEE
been useful for producing ultrahigh peak-power, ultrashort
pulses [6][9]. For instance, multiterawatt amplification of
sub-30-fs pulses has been demonstrated by Barty et al. [25]
and Zhou et al. [26]. Recently, this technique was extended to
produce multiterawatt pulses of less than 20 fs in duration [27].
Such ultrashort pulses are useful for a variety of high-field
applications such as the generation of ultrafast X-ray radia-
tion [28][30], ultrahigh-order harmonic generation [31][33],
photoionization pumped X-ray lasers [34], plasma X-ray lasers
[35][37] and laser wakefield particle acceleration [38], [39].
At these pulse durations, less than 30 mJ of energy are
needed to achieve a peak power of 1 TW. That such low
energies are needed has two main benefits. First, the average
power of terawatt class lasers can be increased since such
modest energy levels can be produced at repetition rates of
10100 Hz. Second, the size of the optics used in the system
can also be significantly smaller than those used for systems
that need joule energies to reach equivalent peak powers.
Further reductions in pulse duration will make it possible
to produce peak powers on the order of 50100 TW on a
reasonable laboratory scale with average powers on the order
of 1020 W.
The most recent evolution in ultrashort pulse CPA systems
has been regenerative pulse shaping to eliminate gain nar-
rowing [42], [43]. Because of the frequency dependent gain
profile, amplification leads to gain narrowing of the pulse
spectrum [26], [40], and an increase in the output pulsewidth.
By including a frequency dependent filter to counter gain
narrowing, regenerative pulse shaping allows the production
of very short amplified pulses, and all the systems described
in this paper use regenerative pulse shaping to counter gain
narrowing.
We also optimized our system to achieve the maximum
extraction efficiency. In principle, Ti:sapphire lasers which are
pumped by Nd:YAG lasers can achieve extraction efficiencies
that approach 57%. Most Ti:sapphire CPA systems, however,
achieve only 10%30% efficiency. To achieve theoretical
maximum quantum efficiency, an amplifier must operate above
the saturation fluence of the laser material [44]. For instance,
to achieve efficiencies near the theoretical limit of Ti:sapphire,
the fluence needs to reach 2 J/cm (twice the saturation
fluence of Ti:sapphire). Saturating the gain in the amplifiers
386 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1998

also stabilizes the pulse-to-pulse amplitude fluctuation. When where is Plancks constant divided by and is a
operating at these fluences, the intensity in the amplifier dimensionless population saturation factor. The total inverted
must remain low to avoid intensity dependent breakdown of population per amplifier area is defined as
dielectric materials in the amplifier chain. This breakdown
typically occurs at around the 5 GW/cm for optical coatings (2.3)
and ns-range pulses. Dividing fluence by intensity, we find
that the pulse duration in the amplifier must be at least 300 where is the length of the amplifier. Equation (2.1) can be
ps for Ti:sapphire. Most Ti:sapphire CPA lasers use stretched rearranged and integrated over the length of the amplifier and
pulse durations that are well below 300 ps and are, therefore, then be expressed in the form
unable to operate at the high fluences necessary for efficient
amplification. (2.4)
In this paper we report on the results of our efforts to
where and are the input and output intensities,
amplify 10-fs pulses. We have developed a compact two-
respectively. Therefore, the time-varying gain, , including
stage Ti:sapphire amplifier system that has produced 16-
gain narrowing and gain saturation at any instant within the
fs 10-TW laser pulses at a 10-Hz repetition rate with a
pulse is given by
final amplifier extraction efficiency greater than 90% of the
theoretical maximum quantum efficiency. The large stretch-
(2.5)
ing ratios ( 100 000) enable the amplifiers to be operated
above the saturation fluence of Ti:sapphire ( 1 J/cm ) without
intensity-dependent damage to optical components. This result Here, gain narrowing is a function of the emission cross section
demonstrates that laser pumping of Ti:sapphire can be a very and gain saturation is a function of the population inversion.
efficient means of producing both high peak and high average Equation (2.2) can also be integrated over the amplifier length
power pulses. Thin solid etalons are used to control gain and rewritten, using (2.1), in the form
narrowing and gain saturation during amplification.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, we provide detailed calculations of the effects that
govern the chirped-pulse amplification including regenerative (2.6)
pulse shaping, gain narrowing and gain saturation. Then in
Using , the instantaneous gain and the output intensity
Section III, we describe the design characteristic of the 10
can also be obtained from (2.5) and (2.6). The initial value of
TW, 16-fs Ti:sapphire laser system, present results obtained
the population inversion is given by
with this system and compare with the calculations described
in Section II. Finally, in Section IV, we describe the present
(2.7)
status of a Ti:sapphire CPA laser system that is designed to
produce a peak power of 100 TW for a pulse duration of 20
fs and an average power of 20 W at a 10-Hz repetition rate and where is the coupling efficiency, is the pump fluence
discuss extension of this system to the petawatt power level. absorbed by the crystal, and is the frequency of the pump
light.
In the cases of regenerative amplifiers and the multipass
II. MODELING OF ULTRABROAD-BAND
amplifiers, the input intensity and the output intensity
CHIRPED-PULSE AMPLIFICATION
per pass in the amplifiers are related by
Here, we present detailed calculations of the effects that
govern the chirped-pulse amplification including regenerative (2.8)
pulse shaping, gain narrowing and gain saturation. The goal of
performing these calculations is to understand how to obtain where is the frequency-dependent single-pass transmis-
the shortest compressed pulse, while simultaneously increasing sion function of the spectral filter for regenerative pulse
the amplifier efficiencies. In our model we assume that: 1) the shaping in the regenerative amplifier or unity for the multipass
gain medium is a homogeneously broadened two-level system; amplifier. The input intensity and the population inversion for
2) the exited-state lifetime is much longer than the laser pulse the next pass are, respectively, given by
duration; and 3) the pump beam distributions and population
(2.9)
inversion densities are uniform.
For a chirped pulse, the emission cross section is and
considered to be a function of instantaneous frequency . (2.10)
The basic equations for the pulse intensity and the
population inversion can be written in the forms [46] To illustrate the effects of gain narrowing and gain saturation
in a Ti:sapphire CPA laser, we calculate the power spectra
(2.1) for three different amplifier stages, which are described in
Section III: 1) a regenerative amplifier; 2) a four-pass am-
plifier; and 3) a double-pass amplifier. In these calculations,
(2.2)
which are based on (2.9) and (2.10), is unity both in
YAMAKAWA et al.: CHIRPED-PULSE AMPLIFICATION OF SUB-20-fs PULSES
Fig. 1. A schematic of a 10-TW 16-fs 10-Hz Ti:sapphire laser system.
Ti:Ss:, Ti:sapphire crystals. Gs: Gratings. Cs: Cylindrical mirrors. F. R.:
Faraday rotator. PC: Pockels cell. PLs: Thin-film polarizers. PR: Periscope
polarization rotator.
regenerative and multipass amplifiers. The spectrum after the
pulse expander (see Fig. 2) is used for the initial pulse to
perform this calculation. It is clearly seen that severe gain
narrowing occurs in a regenerative amplifier while strong gain
saturation occurs in the double-pass amplifier. Since the net
gain in the regenerative amplifier is very high ( 10 ), the
spectrum of the amplified pulse was easily narrowed more than
a factor of two relative to the initial pulse spectrum. Because of
the double-pass amplifier is operated at a fluence of 3 J/cm ,
the effect of gain saturation red-shifts the center wavelength
of the positively chirped pulses from 795 to 823 nm. All these
effects must be controlled during amplification to obtain laser
pulses in the 10-fs regime.
III. DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE
OF A 10-TW 16-fs LASER SYSTEM
A schematic of the laser system is shown in Fig. 1. The
laser system described here is the front end of a four-stage
amplification system which is planned to eventually produce
peak powers on the order of one petawatt (20 J in 20 fs). The
system consists of a Ti:sapphire oscillator, a pulse expander,
a regenerative amplifier, a four-pass amplifier, and a pulse
compressor. The following sections describe this system in
detail.
A. Ti:Sapphire Oscillator
Seed pulses were generated with an all-solid-state mirror-
dispersion-controlled (MDC) Ti:sapphire oscillator capable of
producing 10-fs pulses [47]. Our cavity design is similar to
387
Fig. 2. Measured oscillator spectrum before (dashed curve) and after (solid
curve) the expander.
Fig. 3. Measured interferometric autocorrelation of the mode-locked pulses.
the one previously used for the MDC Ti:sapphire laser [20],
[48]. A Ti:sapphire crystal was placed at the Brewster angle
with a center beam path length of 2.2 mm mounted on a crystal
holder. The laser cavity consisted of two 50 mm radius-of-
curvature folding mirrors, an output coupler, and three flat
mirrors. One of the folding mirror and the three flat mirrors
are chirped mirrors designed for dispersion compensation [49].
After measuring the dispersion of several mirrors, we selected
a set of mirrors to give a constant intracavity GDD. The
repetition frequency of the laser is 82.7 MHz. The pump laser
is a 5-W frequency-doubled continuous-wave (CW) diode-
pumped Nd:YVO laser (Spectra-Physics, Millennia). Stable
mode-locked operation can be obtained with 4 W of pump
power.
Pulse spectra are measured with a calibrated 275-mm
monochrometer coupled with a charge-coupled device (CCD)
camera. A typical spectrum from the laser is shown in Fig. 2.
The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) bandwidth of the
pulses is 120 nm. The interferometric autocorrelation of
the pulses has been measured using a dispersion-balanced
interferometric autocorrelator [18] which is capable of
measuring pulses down to 5 fs in duration. The autocorrelator
uses a 25- m -barium borate (BBO) doubling crystal to avoid
a material dispersion. Fig. 3 shows a typical interferometric
autocorrelation trace. The FWHM pulse duration of the
mode-locked pulses is typically 10 fs.
We have also characterized the phase and amplitude noise
of this all-solid-state MDC oscillator and compared it to that
of the MDC Ti:sapphire oscillator pumped by an Arion laser
[47]. We measured the noise power spectra of the first and
15th harmonics of both Ti:sapphire oscillators with resolution
bandwidth of 1 Hz and 1 MHz depending on range of
388 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1998
(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. (a) Single sideband phase noise spectra density and (b) single side-
band amplitude noise spectra density of the all-solid-state MDC Ti:sapphire
oscillator and the Arion laser pumped MDC Ti:sapphire oscillator (frequency
range from 20 kHz to 400 kHz).
frequency offsets [50]. The calculated phase and amplitude
noise spectral densities in the frequency range from 20 to
400 kHz are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively. In
this high-frequency range, the improvement of the noise of
the all-solid-state Ti:sapphire oscillator is remarkable. The
phase and amplitude noise of the all-solid-state Ti:sapphire
oscillator are approximately 5 dB lower than the Arion laser
pumped Ti:sapphire oscillator over this frequency range. The
root-mean-square (rms) timing jitters and rms amplitude noise
for the all-solid-state and Arion laser pumped Ti:sapphire
oscillators are calculated to be 0.31- and 0.71-ps rms and
0.15% and 0.32% rms, in this frequency range, respectively.
The higher phase and amplitude noise of the Arion laser
pumped Ti:sapphire oscillator is due to instabilities in the
discharge in the plasma tube of the Arion laser.
B. Pulse Expander
Before amplification, the pulses from the oscillator were
stretched by a factor of 100 000 in an all-reflective, cylindrical-
mirror-based pulse expander [51]. The expander consists two
gold-coated 1200-groove/mm ruled gratings, two cylindrical
mirrors with a 1-m radius of curvature, a roof mirror and
a horizontal image inverter. This design allows the com-
pensation of dispersive phase errors up to fifth-order and
eliminates spatial inhomogeneities. By calculating the phase
distortions of the bulk material, dielectric coatings and other
Fig. 5. Fast photodiode output from the leakage light through one of the
cavity mirrors during regenerative amplifier operation with injection seeding.
dispersive elements in the laser system, we were able to
determine the optimum settings of the grating separations
and grating incidence angles for the expander and compressor
that compensate the phase distortions and allow the pulse to
recompress close to the transform limit. The bandpass of this
expander is roughly 140 nm as shown in Fig. 2. The FWHM
duration of the output of the expander is 1.1 ns after 4
passing the expander. Such large stretching ratios ( 110 000)
enable the amplifiers to operate above the saturation fluence of
Ti:sapphire ( 1 J/cm ), and allows efficient energy extraction
without intensity-dependent damage to optical components.
C. Regenerative Amplifier
After passing through the expander, the stretched pulses are
amplified in a regenerative amplifier [6], [25], [52]. We have
investigated using angle-tuned thin etalons to regeneratively
broaden the amplified spectrum in the regenerative amplifier.
The regenerative amplifier is a stable TEM cavity with a
mode size in the Ti:sapphire rod of 1 mm. The resonator is l.8
m long and uses two cavity mirrors. The MgF antireflection
(AR)-coated Ti:sapphire crystal is 7 mm long with 0.15 wt.%
doping. The crystal is end pumped with a frequency-doubled
-switched Nd:YAG laser (Continuum, Powerlite 8010) that
produces 7-ns pulses at a 10-Hz repetition rate. A 50-cm focal-
length lens images the pump beam onto the Ti:sapphire crystal.
Pulse injection in the regenerative amplifier is achieved by
an intracavity Pockels cell (Cleveland Crystal Inc.) placed
between thin-film dielectric polarizers (CVI Laser Corp.). The
thin-film dielectric polarizers have a single-pass transmission
( 98%) from 700 to 950 nm. The Pockels cell is coated
with a sol-gel material. A high voltage pulse generator (Medox
E-O, Inc.) capable of producing up to 6-kV pulses with a
FWHM of 8 ns is used to drive the Pockels cell. A pulse
is injected after reflecting off of one of the polarizers and
passing through the Pockels cell that is pulsed with a half
wave voltage coincident with the optical pulse arrival. After
12 round trips, the pulse is ejected from the cavity, having
fully depleted the gain, by once again pulsing the Pockels cell
to have a half-wave voltage and reflecting off of the other
polarizer. The amplified pulse energy is typically 13 mJ.
Fig. 5 shows a photograph of the leakage light through one
of the cavity mirrors, sampled by a fast photodiode during
regenerative amplifier operation with injection seeding. The
buildup time to reach the maximum energy density is typically
YAMAKAWA et al.: CHIRPED-PULSE AMPLIFICATION OF SUB-20-fs PULSES
Fig. 6. The measured spectrum from the regenerative amplifier, and the
calculated spectrum for two etalons with indices of refraction of 1.38,
thicknesses of 3.0 and 2.8 m, and incidence angles of 2 and 9 , respectively.
130 ns. The pulses are separated by the cavity round-trip time
of 11 ns.
Two 3- m-thick etalons (Melles Griot Corp.) are used in
transmission and are angle tuned so as to be off resonance
(highest attenuation) around the peak of the gain profile
centered at 790 nm. It should be noted that for a given
thickness etalon which has been tuned to antiresonance, there
corresponds one value of single pass gain which gives a
maximally flat spectrum. Higher values of gain produce nar-
rower spectra and lower values produce double peaked spectra.
The single-pass gain is conveniently adjusted by changing
the pump energy to the regenerative amplifier. The total
output can be held constant by adjusting the number of cavity
round-trips. The amplifier output energy was adjusted to be
approximately 8 mJ. When the stretched pulse was amplified in
the regenerative amplifier without a spectral filter, the spectrum
narrowed to 28 nm. However, by using the etalons to produce
a frequency dependent attenuation and selectively amplifying
the wings of the spectrum, in the spectrum of the amplified
pulse was broadened to 82-nm FWHM.
One important note on using these etalons is that they
can produce significant cubic phase error. To consider this
effect, we have measured the effects of the etalons on the
gain spectrum of the regenerative amplifier and used the
positions of the peaks to estimate the phase associated with
the etalons [53]. The incidence angles for the etalons were
2 and 9 . Using 1.38 for the index of nitrocellulose etalons,
which is near the nominal value at 800 nm, allowed us to
match the peaks well using thicknesses of 3.0 and 2.8 m.
Using these estimates, we modeled the output spectrum of the
regenerative amplifier including the effects of the etalons, gain
narrowing and gain saturation using (2.9) and (2.10) described
in Section II as shown in Fig. 6. While the calculated spectrum
is actually somewhat broader than the measured spectrum
because we do not take into account wavelength-dependent
reflectance and transmission of the optics in the regenerative
amplifier, the calculation does reproduce the broadening and
general shape of the spectrum well. Thus, the placement and
magnitude of the etalon peaks should be relatively accurate,
and the phase due to the etalons may be calculated. Fig. 7
shows the calculated group delay as a function of wavelength
accumulated by the pulse passing through the two etalons
for 12 round-trips in the regenerative amplifier. The delay
is largely quadratic over most of the bandwidth of the pulse
389
Fig. 7. The calculated group delay as a function of wavelength accumulated
by the pulse due to the two etalons for 12 round-trips in the regenerative
amplifier.
indicating that the predominant phase distortion is cubic. This
predominantly cubic phase of the etalons as well as the cubic
phase distortion of the high damage threshold mirror coatings
(CVI Laser Corporation) has been compensated by altering the
grating angle of incidence in the compressor.
D. Multipass Amplifier
The 8-mJ output beam from the regenerative amplifier is en-
larged by a Galilean telescope to an 6-mm diameter. Further
amplification is accomplished in a four-pass amplifier. This
amplifier uses a 20-mm diameter, 15-mm long, Ti:sapphire
crystal (0.15 wt.% doping) with MgF AR coatings on both
faces. The amplifier is pumped with 532-nm pulses from a
frequency-doubled, -switched Nd:YAG laser (Continuum,
Powerlite 9010) that produces, 690-mJ 7-ns pulses at a 10-Hz
repetition rate. The beam from the pump laser is split into two
outputs, which are then relay imaged to opposite faces of the
amplifier crystal. Relay imaging optics with a demagnification
( 0.67) provide spatially uniform pump beams with
diameters of 6 mm at both faces of the crystal. The signal and
pump beams propagate in a near collinear manner to maximize
the gain and absorption, respectively. Since thermal lensing
occurs in the Ti:sapphire crystal at 7-W average pump
power, the beam diameter on the last pass is decreased to 4.5
mm. For high efficiency, the pulse fluence on the last pass in
the amplifier was designed to be 1.6 J/cm . The output pulse
energy was 320 mJ. This amplifier provides total saturated
gain of 40. The small-signal gain in the amplifier has also been
measured to be 3.7. Under this condition, this amplifier has
demonstrated 90% of the theoretical maximum conversion
efficiency of 532-nm pump light to 790-nm radiation. This
result agrees well both with a FrantzNodvik simulation [44]
and our model calculation as shown in Fig. 8. At this high
fluence, however, the amplified pulse spectrum is reshaped
and red-shifted due to saturation. The reshaped spectrum has
a FWHM of 28 nm. According to our model calculation,
the thin etalons in the regenerative amplifier can be tuned to
produce preweighted spectrum from the regenerative amplifier
(Fig. 6) which can compensate for spectral shifting that occurs
during four-pass amplification. By doing this, the experimental
amplified spectrum was increased to 72-nm FWHM as shown
in Fig. 9.
390 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1998
Fig. 8. Saturation characteristics for frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser
pumped Ti:sapphire laser amplifiers. The solid curve is the calculated
efficiency of a 532-nm pumped Ti:sapphire amplifiers as a function of
input (790 nm) pulse fluence based on FrantzNodvic simulation. The broken
line shows the theoretical maximum extraction efficiency of 532-nm pump
light to 790-nm radiation. Circle and square represent the measured and
predicted extraction efficiencies in the four-pass and double-pass amplifiers,
respectively.
Fig. 9. Measured and calculated spectrum after the four-pass amplifier.
E. Pulse Compressor
Before being sent to the compressor, the beam was up-
collimated to 4 cm in diameter with another Galilean re-
flective telescope. The compressor consisted of two 1200-
groove/mm gold-coated gratings (Milton Roy Corporation,
MR136), which had a measured diffraction efficiency of
90% at a 62.1 angle of incidence. The transmission of
the compressor, including the gold-coated turning optics, was
50%, yielding a compressed output pulse energy of 160
mJ. Approximately 10% of the compressor output was sent
to a single-shot autocorrelator, which used matched beam-
splitters to assure balanced dispersion in the two delay lines.
The doubling crystal used in the autocorrelator was 50 m of
BBO. The system was optimized under full power conditions.
A typical autocorrelation trace is shown in Fig. 10. The
FWHM of the measured autocorrelation differs from that of the
transform limited pulse shape by less than 1.4 fs. The duration
of the transform limit, as calculated from the measured,
amplified spectrum after the compressor is 15 fs. The high
degree of agreement suggests that the compressed pulses are
very nearly transform limited. The amplified spectrum after
the pulse compressor is also shown in Fig. 10.
The spatial beam quality was determined by focusing the
attenuated output with a 2-m focal-length spherical mirror and
measuring the spot size at the focus with a CCD camera.
At a 6-TW power level, the spatial quality of the beam is
1.13 and 1.05 times diffraction limited that of the Gaussian
beam in - and -planes, respectively. Under the full power
Fig. 10. Measured and calculated autocorrelation. The dotted line is the
calculated, transform-limited autocorrelation based on the measured, amplified
spectrum after the pulse compressor. The circles represent the measured
autocorrelation of the 16-fs pulse. Inset: measured amplified spectrum after
compression.
conditions ( 10 TW), the near field profile of the beam closely
resembles that of the pump beam (near flat-top) due to strong
saturation in the amplifier and the beam quality of the -plane
is decreased to about 2.5 times that of the flat-topped beam.
The decreased beam quality in this plane may be caused by
thermal aberrations in the Ti:sapphire crystal. With an
off-axis parabolic mirror, this system can produce an intensity
of 3 10 W/cm .
IV. TOWARDS A 100 TW AND BEYOND
In the system that we are presently building, the output of
the two-stage Ti:sapphire amplifiers is up collimated to an 12
mm diameter with a Galilean telescope and then introduced
into a final double-pass amplifier that is designed to produce
3 J of radiation (see Fig. 11). This amplifier uses a 40 mm
diameter 25-mm-long Ti:sapphire crystal with AR coatings on
both faces and is pumped with a custom built Nd:YAG laser
which is capable of producing 7 J of 532-nm radiation at
10 Hz. The pump laser uses Nd:YAG rod amplifiers up to a
diameter of 12 mm in the master oscillatorpower amplifier
(MOPA) configuration. The goal of this type of pump laser
design is to extract as much energy as possible and to ensure
the high frequency conversion efficiency while maintaining
a uniform spatial beam profile. This had been accomplished
by relay-imaged amplifier chains in large scale Nd:glass laser
systems [54].
Our Nd:YAG pump laser consists of an oscillator, a pream-
plifier chain, two power amplifier chains and two frequency
doubling crystals. The 18-ns pulses from a long cavity single-
longitudinal-mode Nd:YAG oscillator that transmits the Fara-
day isolator and the soft aperture are relayed with a spatial
filter ( 1.0) through a Nd:YAG amplifier rods of 9-
mm diameter. Next, the 470-mJ output pulses pass through
two Pockels cells and are split into two beams. Each beam
is further amplified in four 12-mm-diameter Nd:YAG rod
amplifiers. Energies up to 7 J per beam in the IR have been
achieved. Four relay imaging optics per arm ( 2.0 and
1.0) are used to relay the images into those 12-mm rod
amplifiers and frequency doubling crystals. Faraday isolators
and Pockels cells are used to prevent parasitic oscillation and
amplified spontaneous emission between the amplifiers. Ninety
YAMAKAWA et al.: CHIRPED-PULSE AMPLIFICATION OF SUB-20-fs PULSES
Fig. 11. An optical layout of a 100-TW 20-fs 10-Hz Ti:sapphire laser system. Ti:Ss: Ti:sapphire crystals. Gs: Gratings. Cs: Cylindrical mirrors. F. R.:
Faraday rotator. PC: Pockels cell. PLs: Thin-film polarizers. R. I.: Relay imaging optics. VSF: Vacuum spatial filter. PR: Periscope polarization rotator.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 12. (a) Vertical and (b) horizontal cross sections of the pump beam
profile imaged on the Ti:sapphire amplifier crystal, respectively.
degrees rotators placed between first and second 12-mm rod
amplifiers, third and fourth 12-mm rod amplifiers are also
used to cancel the birefringent depolarization introduced by
the amplifiers.
The IR outputs from the power amplifier chains are fre-
quency doubled to 532 nm using type II KD*P crystals. The
conversion efficiency defined as the green energy output from
the crystal divided by the IR energy input to the crystal
was 50% which yields output pulse energy of 3.5 J
per pulse at 532 nm. The frequency doubled outputs from
the KD*P crystals are then relay imaged to both faces of
the Ti:sapphire amplifier crystal. Fig. 12(a) and (b) shows
vertical and horizontal cross sections of a typical pump beam
profile image on the double-pass Ti:sapphire amplifier crystal,
respectively.
391
Fig. 13. Calculated spectra after a regenerative amplifier (dashed curve), a
four-pass amplifier (dotted curve) and a double-pass amplifier (solid curve).
Inset: transform-limited pulse shape corresponding to the spectrum after the
double-pass amplifier (FWHM 17 fs).
The output of the Ti:sapphire double-pass amplifier will then
pass through a spatial filter to ensure the diffraction limited
beam quality as well as increasing the beam diameter up to 70
mm and be introduced into the final vacuum compressor. The
compressor will consist of four gold coated 1200-groove/mm
holographic gratings. A four-grating arrangement is dictated
by the maximum available size of 1200 groove/mm gratings
and the onset of optical breakdown of the coating material on
the last grating. The sizes of the gratings are 220 mm 165
mm for the first and last gratings and 420 mm 210 mm
for the second and third gratings, respectively. The diffraction
efficiency of these gratings was measured to be 90% over the
100 nm bandwidth (centered at 790 nm), and thus the overall
efficiency should be greater than 60%.
We have modeled the performance of the double-pass am-
plifier in order to obtain the largest bandwidth of the amplified
pulses, while simultaneously extracting as much energy as
possible. Calculated spectra after each amplifier are shown in
392 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1998
Fig. 13. The three amplifiers are pumped by 50 mJ, 700 mJ,
and 7 J of 532-nm radiation in order of their positions in the
amplifier chain. Two solid etalons (thicknesses of 2.2 and 2.3
m) are used in transmission and is angle tuned so as to be off
resonance around the peak of the gain profile of Ti:sapphire.
In this calculation, the incidence angles of the two etalons are
set to be 39 and 44 , respectively. It is not desirable to center
the wavelength of the pulses at 800 nm in the regenerative and
four-pass amplifier stages, since the effect of gain saturation
causes the pulse spectrum to severely red-shift from the peak
of the gain in the double-pass amplifier. Instead, a broad
amplified bandwidth at the high-energy level is obtained by
positioning the input spectrum on the short wavelength side
of the desired output. The bandwidth and output energy of the
amplified pulse that we have modeled here are 80 nm and
3.6 J, respectively. The duration of the transform limit, as
calculated from the amplified spectrum after the double-pass
amplifier (Fig. 13) is 17 fs. Using the measured diffraction
efficiency of the gratings as mention above, the energy of the
compressed pulse is expected to be 2 J. Thus, the peak power
for the laser pulses are expected to be 115 TW.
Current CPA technologies, when implemented on large-
scale, single-shot-per-hour, inertial-confinement-fusion, Nd:
glass lasers, have produced laser pulses over a petawatt peak
power [55]. We plan to develop a repetitive ( 1 Hz) petawatt
class laser using ultrashort pulse CPA architectures described
in this paper. To scale the system to peak powers above 100
TW, requires larger size gain media, higher energy pump
lasers and larger diameter gratings. Ti:sapphire disks with up
to 100 mm in diameter are available with current growth
technologies [56]. To obtain greater than 30 J of energy
from this Ti:sapphire disk requires a pump laser with only
60 J of energy. Such a high energy per pulse can only be
achieved by using Nd:glass based systems. Recently a phase
conjugated Nd:glass zigzag slab amplifier system has been
developed for X-ray generation from laser produced plasmas
and other applications [57]. The system produces diffraction-
limited output pulses of nearly 30 J with an average output
power of 150 W at a 6-Hz repetition rate. This amplifier design
is also currently used to generate spatially and temporally
coherent 120-J output pulses from four discrete Nd:glass
zig-zag amplifiers [58]. Such systems would be ideal for
pumping large aperture Ti:sapphire disks to produce high-
energy, 20-fs pulses with near diffraction-limited beam quality.
It should be noted that the final energy that is achievable
from an ultrafast CPA laser system is determined by the pulse
compression gratings. The maximum fluence and intensity
damage thresholds for the current gold coated holographic
gratings are approximately 400 mJ/cm and 10 TW/cm [59],
respectively. For petawatt operation, the beam size of the
amplified pulse will need to be 150 mm and the gratings
will have to be 600 mm across. Since gratings up to 1000 mm
in diameter are now manufactured with the state of the art
technologies [55], scaling of 20-fs CPA technology to petawatt
peak powers appears quite feasible. A petawatt laser facility
based on ultrafast CPA technology is currently being designed
and constructed by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute
and is scheduled become operational in 1999.
V. CONCLUSION
By using chirped pulse amplification with a compact two-
stage Ti:sapphire amplifier system, we have produced 10-TW
near spectrally limited 16-fs duration pulses. This laser system
operates at a 10-Hz repetition rate. Thin solid etalons are
used to control gain narrowing and gain saturation during
the amplification. The system has achieved a conversion
efficiency of 532-nm pump light to 790-nm radiation in
excess of 90% of the theoretical maximum. These results
agree well with our model calculations. This model has been
used to design an optimized Ti:sapphire amplifier system for
producing efficiently pulses of 20-fs duration with peak and
average powers approaching 100 TW and 20 W, respectively.
We believe that the use of similar ultrashort pulse CPA
architectures will eventually allow us to construct laboratory-
scale laser systems capable of producing 20 fs pulses with
peak powers of one petawatt and repetition rates of 1 Hz.
Such lasers could be expected to produce a focused laser
intensity of 10 W/cm and would have a major impact
on ultrahigh field sciences.
Note Added in Proof: After submission of this paper, we
have recently completed the construction of a three-stage
Ti:sapphire CPA laser system that produces a peak power in
excess of 100 TW for a pulse duration of less than 19 fs and
an average power of 19 W at 10 Hz repetition rate.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors sincerely thank encouragement given by T.
Matoba, T. Arisawa, H. Ohno and M. Iizumi. They also
acknowledge contributions by T. Kase and Y. Akahane for
their technical support of this work.
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394 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1998

Koichi Yamakawa was born in Osaka, Japan, on Shinichi Matsuoka was born in Osaka, Japan,
August 16, 1964. He received the B.S. degree on March 2, 1970. He received the B.S. degree
from Osaka Institute of Technology, Osaka, Japan, from Osaka Institute of Technology, Osaka, Japan,
in 1987, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from in 1992, and the M.S. and Ph.D degrees from
Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1989 and 1992, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1994 and 1997,
respectively. His doctoral research involved gener- respectively. His doctoral research involved beam
ation and applications of high-intensity ultrashort smoothing by coherence control (e.g., partially co-
laser pulses by using an inertial confinement fusion herent light and spectral dispersed light) for inertial
Nd:glass laser system at the Institute of Laser En- confinement fusion at the Institute of Laser Engi-
gineering (ILE), Osaka University. neering, Osaka University.
He held a Fellowship from the Japan Society In 1997 he joined the Advanced Photon Research
for the Promotion of Science and worked at ILE, Osaka University from Center, KANSAI Research Establishment, Japan Atomic Energy Research
1992 to 1994. In 1994, he joined the Advanced Science Research Center, Institute, Ibaraki, Japan, where he has been involved in research on the
Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), Ibaraki, Japan, where he development of ultrahigh intensity, ultrashort pulse laser systems.
is engaged in research on laser cooling and acceleration of charged particle Dr. Matsuoka is a member of the Optical Society of America, the Japan
beams. From 1994 to 1995, he was a Visiting Scientist at the Department Society of Applied Physics, and the Laser Society of Japan.
of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California at San Diego, La
Jolla, California. During this time, he started to design and construction
of a multiterawatt sub-20-fs Ti:sapphire laser system for ultrafast X-ray
diffraction studies and high intensity laser physics. In 1995, he continued
the development of ultrahigh intensity, ultrashort pulse laser systems at the David N. Fittinghoff, for photograph and biography, see this issue, p. 277.
Advanced Photon Research Center, KANSAI Research Establishment, JAERI.
His primary interests and research activities include ultrahigh-peak and high-
average power laser systems incorporating spatio-temporal pulse phase and
amplitude control, nonlinear wavefront correction, frequency conversion and
the ultrafast laser generation of hard X-rays for medical applications. Christopher P. J. Barty (S84M88), for a biography, see this issue, p. 158.
Dr. Yamakawa is a member of the Optical Society of America, the
International Society for Optical Engineering, the Japan Society of Applied
Physics and the Laser Society of Japan. He received a 21th Prize of Laser
Engineering from the Laser Society of Japan and a Best Paper Award from
the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan both in 1997.

Makoto Aoyama was born in Nagoya, Japan, on

September 13, 1968. He received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees from Science University of Tokyo,
Tokyo, Japan, in 1993 and 1995, respectively, and
is working toward the Ph.D. degree at Japan Atomic
Energy Research Institute.
After receiving the M.S. degree, he participated
in research on the development of ultrahigh inten-
sity, ultrashort pulse laser systems at the Advanced
Photon Research Center, KANSAI Research Estab-
lishment, Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.
His interests include ultrahigh-intenstiy ultrashort pulse lasers and their
frequency conversion.