A first of its kind, multiterawatt, ultrashort pulse laser system is described. The system is capable

C. P. J. Barty, B. E. Lemoff, C. L. Gordon III and P.T. EppEdward L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford UniversityStanford, California 94305ABSTRACTA first of its kind, multiterawatt, ultrashort pulse laser system is described. The system is capableof producing 125-mJ, 35-fs, 800-nm pulses with near diffraction limited beam quality at a 10 Hz repetitionrate. Methods for control of phase and amplitude distortion during sub- 100-fs amplification are presented.1. INTRODUCTIONChirped pulse amplification (CPA) has become a common technique for circumventing opticaldamage and nonlinear effects during the amplification of short optical pulses in solid state laser media.1Terawatt level pulses with durations ranging from '.'l ps to —100 fs have been produced by a number ofsystems. Although much shorter pulse oscillators exist, the implementation of terawatt level CPA withpulses on the order of 10 fs has not been accomplished. In conventional CPA systems, uncompensatablephase errors in the expansion and recompression process and distortions due to refractive optics produce