We present the performance of a high-power Nd:glass laser system,which produces a 1.1 J,250 fs,7.3 nm broadband laser pulse based on the combination of optical parametric amplification(OPA) and chirped pulse amplification(CPA).The two-stage OPA provides broadband seed pulses for the three-stage Nd:glass amplifiers based on the technology of CPA.Compared to the conventional oscillator seed source,the most important advantage of such a seed source supplied by the two-stage OPA is that it possesses the capacities of broad bandwidth and high energy.
Combining the configurations of collinear and small-angle noncollinear phase-matching,a mid-infrared(MIR) femtosecond optical parametric amplifier(OPA) with extended tunability is proposed and demonstrated.A tuning range from 2.0 μm to 4.7 μm is demonstrated by a two-stage LiNbO3-based femto-second OPA,which well exceeds the typical tuning range reported so far.MIR femtosecond pulses with energy up to 30 μJ are obtained.