40 TW Ti:sapphire laser at 10 Hz

Summary form only given. We have developed a compact Ti:sapphire laser amplifier system that generates 40 TW pulses, with 24 fs pulse duration, at a repetition rate of 10 Hz, and with an average power of 10 W. The source of the ultrashort seed pulses is a KLM Ti:sapphire oscillator pumped by a Spectra-physics Millenia, that delivers 11 fs pulses at 80 MHz. This is followed by a pulse stretcher, three stages of multipass amplification, and a pulse compressor. The seed pulses are stretched to 80 ps. The output energy of the third amplifier stage is 1.34 J, giving a total gain of approximately 20 from the third amplifier stage, at an efficiency of 45%. The net compression efficiency (including mirrors in the compressor) is 75%, resulting in a compressed pulse energy of over 1 J. The output beam from the laser is focusable to within 1.2 times the diffraction limit, and intensities in excess of 2/spl times/10/sup 19/ W cm/sup -2/ have been generated.