Abstract
"The energy of near-infrared femtosecond laser pulses generated by optical parametric amplification (OPA) in β-barium borate (BBO) crystals pumped by femtosecond Ti:sapphire lasers is restricted to few-mJ due to the 20 mm limited diam- eter of available crystals. In a type I collinear OPA with an yttrium calcium oxoborate (YCOB) crystal, pumped with femtosecond Ti:sapphire lasers at 800 nm wavelength, the 1300 nm signal wavelength and 2080 nm idler wavelength are located in the normal and anomalous group velocity dispersion range, respectively. Due to the small group velocity mismatch (GVM) between signal and idler pulses, as broad as 27 THz gain bandwidth can be obtained in a 3-mm YCOB crystal at 100 GW/cm2 pump intensity. A high parametric gain is the result of the increased parametric interaction length due to the different signs of GVM between pump-signal and pump-idler pulses. More than 10-mJ energy femtosecond laser pulses at 1300 nm wavelength can be generated by OPA in YCOB crystals with larger than 50 mm clear aperture."