Concept and Construction of a terawatt Cr:ZnSe laser at 2400nm

One of the most common types of lasers for generating terawatt pulses with intensities larger than 10 to the power of 20 W/cm^2 is the well established Ti:sapphire laser. The combination of a broad optical band width centered at around 800 nm together with high cross sections and commercially available pump lasers renders this material a suitable choice to build high energy chirped pulse amplification (CPA) systems. However, there are many effects in the interaction of strong fields with matter that would benefit from larger wavelengths than this of Ti:sapphire lasers. A very promising candidate for delivering similarly intense pulses at longer wave lengths are chromium Cr 2+ ions in II–VI chalcogenides like zinc selenide (ZnSe) and zinc sulfide (ZnS). The presentation reviews the design and physical considerations of the development of a terawatt ultra-short pulse laser based on Cr:ZnSe or Cr:ZnS.