Femtosecond Optical Parametric Amplifier for Petawatt Nd:Glass Lasers

We study a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser pumped optical parametric amplifier (OPA) at 1053nm. The OPA generates stable signal pulses with duration smaller than 100fs, wavelength drift smaller than 0.5nm, and pulse-to-pulse fluctuation of about ±4%, by employing an external seeder. In a terawatt laser pumped large-aperture LiNbO₃ OPA, pulse energy at signal has been scaled up to 4mJ. This mJ-class femtosecond OPA at 1053nm presents a feasible alternative to optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, and is ready to be applied to petawatt lasers.