High-energy picosecond Nd:YVO4 slab amplifier for OPCPA pumping

© The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract We demonstrate 12-ps pulses with up to 0.6-mJ pulse energy at repetition rates of 50 kHz and 100 kHz from a Nd:YVO4 slab amplifier built in a simple four-pass config-uration. Excellent noise performance with pulse energy fluc-tuations below 0.8 % rms has been achieved by using 10-µJ seed pulses from a highly stable industrial laser system and moderate gain (30–46) in the slab amplifier.