Abstract

In the laser field, scientists working in amplification of picosecond and femtosecond pulses have been confronted with an issue similar to the one faced by scientists in the radar field 30 years ago. Because of peak power limitations, short pulses could not be amplified efficiently. In the radar field this problem was circumvented by chirping and stretching the input pulse before amplification.^1-5 The amplification being done at a much lower peak power, more efficient extraction could be done. After amplification the pulse was compressed to a value c* 1/AF, where AF is the total frequency chirp.

© 1986 Optical Society of America