Femtosecond Optical Pulse Amplification.
01 January 1988
A number of techniques have been developed for amplification of optical pulses of approximately 100 fs duration. These amplifiers span a wide range of operating parameters: from kilowatt to gigawatt peak powers and from 10 Hz to megahertz repetition rates, and amplification of femtosecond pulses has been demonstrated at several wavelengths including visible, near infrared and ultraviolet regions. Several problems arise when amplifying a short optical pulse to very high intensities. In this article, these problems are discussed and the state of the art of femtosecond optical pulse amplification is reviewed.