Carrier-envelope phase stabilization of a terawatt level chirped pulse amplifier for generation of intense isolated attosecond pulses

We demonstrate the first carrier-envelope phase (CEP)-stabilized chirped pulse amplification system with pulse peak-powers in the terawatt regime. The system, which eventually is intended to be used in the generation of isolated attosecond pulses, consists of two consecutive multipass amplification stages. The first amplification stage is a commercial CEP-stable kHz system including a single 13-pass amplifier reaching a pulse energy of 2.3 mJ. Pulses are picked after the first stage at a repetition rate of 50 Hz and are further amplified in a 5-pass power-amplifier to pulse energies that reach up to 80 mJ before compression. After compression the pulse energy is 35mJ at a pulse duration of 32 fs, signifying a peak power of 1.1 terawatt. Peak-powers exceeding 1.5 TW should easily be achievable by improving the efficiency of the grating compressor. The CEP-stability of the terawatt system is demonstrated by single shot measurements of the residual CEP jitter at the full repetition rate and show an excellent root-mean-square value of 315 mrad. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America