We present a high peak and average power optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system driven by diode-pumped Yb:KGW and Nd:YAG lasers running at 1 kHz repetition rate. The advanced architecture of the system allows us to achieve >53 W average power combined with 5.5 TW peak power, along with sub-220 mrad CEP stability and sub-9 fs pulse duration at a center wavelength around 880 nm. Broadband, background-free, passively CEP stabilized seed pulses are produced in a series of cascaded optical parametric amplifiers pumped by the Yb:KGW laser, while a diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser system provides multi-mJ pump pulses for power amplification stages. Excellent stability of output parameters over 16 hours of continuous operation is demonstrated.

The extreme light infrastructure attosecond light pulse source offers beamtime for users of various attosecond and particle sources driven by versatile laser systems. Here we report on the state of the art of a few-cycle, multi-TW, 1kHz repetition rate laser system, now fully operational in the facility. The system is based on four stages of optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) pumped by a total of 320mJ, 80ps frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser pulses. All OPA stages utilize double crystal configuration, which design has been also confirmed by model calculations. The 1kHz SYLOS 2 system produces 32mJ laser pulses around a central wavelength of 891nm with 6.6fs (<2.3 optical cycles) pulse duration exceeding the peak power of 4.8 TW on a daily basis. The recorded best pulse duration is 6.3fs, which corresponds to 2.12 cycles and 5.1 TW peak power. During long-term (24h) performance tests, energy stability of 1.2%, carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stability of 210mrad, and pointing stability of 0.4µrad were demonstrated, while the Strehl ratio of the beam is kept above 0.75. In order to help the alignment of all the different experiments at the facility and to reduce the workload on SYLOS 2 system, a second laser system has been developed. The so-called SYLOS Experimental Alignment (SEA) laser mimicks the performance of the SYLOS 2 laser, but at a repetition rate two orders of magnitude lower and without CEP-stabilization. The three single-crystal OPA stages of the SEA laser provide 42mJ pulse energy for the users, while having energy stability of 0.87% and sub-13fs pulse duration at a repetition rate ranging from a single shot up to 10Hz.

We report the recent results on development of a CEP-stable 1 kHz repetition rate TW-class OPCPA system driven by femtosecond Yb:KGW and picosecond Nd:YAG pump sources. Seed pulses with spectra spanning over an octave are produced in a continuum generator pumped by CEP-stable pulses from a difference frequency generator operated at 1.3–1.6 μm. After amplification in NOPA, pulses with energy up to 70 μJ and spectra supporting durations of 5 fs are obtained. Sub-70 mrad CEP jitter at the output of system frontend is demonstrated.

We present a compact TW-class OPCPA system operating at 800 nm. Broadband seed pulses are generated and pre-amplified to 25 μJ in a white light continuum seeded femtosecond NOPA. Amplification of the seed pulses to 35 mJ at a repetition rate of 10 Hz and compression to 9 fs is demonstrated.

Direct carrier-envelope phase stabilization of an Yb:KGW MOPA laser system is demonstrated with a residual phase jitter reduced to below 100 mrad, which compares favorably with previous stabilization reports, both of amplified laser systems as well as of ytterbium-based oscillators. This novel stabilization scheme relies on a frequency synthesis scheme and a feed-forward approach. The direct stabilization of a sub-MHz frequency comb from a CPA amplifier not only reduces the phase noise but also greatly simplifies the stabilization setup.