Phase and amplitude control for compact, high-intensity femtosecond lasers

Summary form only given. A whole host of ´real world´ applications for amplified femtosecond pulses has been identified over the past several years. Included among these are the use of energetic femtosecond pulses for micromachining where the precise, deterministic cutting behavior of the ultrashort pulses are exploited. We have produced 18-fs, 4.4 TW pulses at 50-Hz, and /spl sim/20-fs pulses at 10-Hz with energies at the joule level. This demonstration shows that a terawatt peak power can now be obtained with extremely modest amounts of energy: 10-20 mJ. Thus, a terawatt class system can be made much more compact (a single amplifier could be used, in fact) and at much higher repetition rates than ever before. Thus, those applications requiring the peak intensities only obtainable with a terawatt class laser can look forward to doing them with a smaller, and simpler system.