High power ultrashort pulse lasers (invited)

Small scale terawatt and soon even petawatt (1000 TW) class laser systems are made possible by application of the chirped-pulse amplification technique to solid-state laser combined with the availability of broad bandwidth materials. These lasers make possible a new class of high gradient accelerators based on the large electric fields associated with intense laser-plasma interactions or from the intense laser field directly. Here, we concentrate on the laser technology to produce these intense pulses. Application of the smallest of these systems to the production of high brightness electron sources is also introduced. copyright American Institute of Physics