Large-aperture chirped volume Bragg grating based fiber CPA system

A fiber chirped pulse amplification system at 1558nm was demonstrated using a large-aperture volume Bragg grating stretcher and compressor made of Photo-Thermal-Refractive (PTR) glass. Such PTR-glass based gratings represent a new type of pulse stretching and compressing devices which are compact, monolithic and optically efficient. Furthermore, since PTR glass technology enables volume gratings with transverse apertures which are large, homogeneous and scalable, it also enables high pulse energies and powers far exceeding those achievable with other existing compact pulse-compression technologies. Additionally, reciprocity of chirped gratings with respect to stretching and compression also enables to address a long-standing problem in CPA system design of stretcher-compressor dispersion mismatch. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.