Design and construction of a TW-class 12-fs Ti:Sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system

We describe a design and a construction of a TW-class 12-fs Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system. We developed a broadband pulse stretcher, a broadband gain-narrowing compensator, broadband high-energy mirrors, high-energy dichroic chirped mirrors, a dispersion compensator, and a broadband pulse compressor for /spl sim/10-fs pulse generation. Utilizing these optical devices, we demonstrated a generation of 12-fs pulses from a 10-Hz-repetition-rate Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse multipass amplifier system and a 1-kHz-repetition-rate Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse regenerative amplifier system. Optimized designs of broadband Ti:sapphire amplifiers with multilayer gain-narrowing compensators and an adaptive dispersion compensator with a spatial light modulator contribute to the shorter pulse amplification.