Towards terawatt-power optical parametric chirped pulse amplification of phase-controlled sub-10 fs laser pulses

We have generated pulses with a spectral bandwidth corresponding to a Fourier-limit of 8.7 fs. The power amplifier stage, which is presently under construction, has been designed to further amplify the pulses to /spl sim/20mJ/pulse. This should lead to >10 mJ, sub-10 fs pulses after compression, corresponding to a peak power exceeding one terawatt, while maintaining carrier-envelope phase control. An upgrade of our NOPCPA system is in progress, with the aim to generate sub-10 pulses with a terawatt peak power and a fully controlled electromagnetic field evolution. The seed pulses for the NOPCPA are provided by a 11 fs mode-locked Ti:Sapphire oscillator laser with a tightly controlled 75 MHz repetition frequency and /spl phi//sub CE/. Before amplification the pulses are sent through a combined grating stretcher/LCDshaper setup to stretch the pulses and control the spectral phase.