The generation of power- and wavelength-scalable few optical cycle pulses remains one of the major challenges in modern laser physics. Over the past decade, the development of table-top optical parametric chirped pulse amplification-based systems was progressing at amazing speed, demonstrating excellent performance characteristics in terms of pulse duration, energy, peak power and repetition rate, which place them at the front line of modern ultrafast laser technology. At present, table-top optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers comprise a unique class of ultrafast light sources, which currently amplify octave-spanning spectra and produce carrier-envelope phase-stable, few optical cycle pulses with multi-gigawatt to multi-terawatt peak powers and multi-watt average powers, with carrier wavelengths spanning a considerable range of the optical spectrum.
State of the art of few optical cycle table-top OPCPA systems. The central wavelength is indicated by colored circles, where color coding denotes the nonlinear crystal used as an amplifying medium. The amplified bandwidths are schematically depicted by horizontal bars, which represent the full width of the amplified spectrum. The time bar on the top marks the year of experimental inception of OPCPA in the particular wavelength region.
This Article gives an overview on the state of the art of table-top optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers, addressing their relevant scientific and technological aspects, and provides a short outlook of practical applications in the growing field of ultrafast science.
A. Dubietis, A. Matijošius, Table-top optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers: past and present (REVIEW), Opto-Electronic Advances 6, 220046 (2023).