Control of the superfluorescence for compact optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

A compact optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system has been demonstrated, in which a novel double-pass optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier was introduced. The signal was double-pass amplified in the second nonlinear crystal by a long pump pulse, and the signal and pump pulses of each pass were completely phase matched in the plane of the maximum effective nonlinearity. The superfluorescence was markedly suppressed to less than 1% of the total output pulse energy with a total saturation gain of ∼3 × 107 and single pulse energy fluctuation less than 3% rms.