A source of 2 terawatt, 2.7 cycle laser pulses based on noncollinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification

We demonstrate a noncollinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier system that produces 7.6 fs pulses with a peak power of 2 terawatt at 30 Hz repetition rate. Using an ultra-broadband Ti: Sapphire seed oscillator and grating-based stretching and compression combined with an LCD phase-shaper, we amplify a 310 nm wide spectrum with a total gain of 3 x 10(7), and compress it within 5% of its Fourier limit. The total integrated parametric fluorescence is kept below 0.2%, leading to a pre-pulse contrast of 2 x 10(-8) on picosecond timescales. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America