Sub-20 ps high energy pulses from 1 kHz neodymium-based CPA

Chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique was realized in Nd:YVO 4 and Nd:YAG amplifiers. The front-end of the system consists of an Yb-doped fiber-optic master oscillator and a chirped fiber Bragg grating stretcher with a chain of Nd-based solid-state amplifiers followed by a grating compressor with custom high-dispersion multilayer dielectric gratings. This allowed us to implement a relatively compact and moderately complex master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) layout. 85 mJ of sub-20 ps pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate was obtained at the output. The amplifier features favourable parameters for OPCPA pumping.