• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.556-563
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• 2006

We present a comprehensive study of a chirped pulse Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier system operating at 1 kHz. Main constituents of the system are described in detail. The amplifier stage was first converted to a repetition rate-tunable kHz gain-switched nanosecond Ti:sapphire laser. Operation characteristics at different repetition rates such as build-up times of laser pulses, pump power-dependent output powers and pulse durations, damage thresholds, and tunability ranges were studied. Based on the results achieved, the switching time of the Pocket's cell used and the round trip numbers in the regenerative amplifier were optimized at 1 kHz. The output pulses with a pulse width of 50fs from a home-made Ken lens mode-locked Ti:sapphire oscillator were used as seed pulses. The pulses were expanded to 120ps in a grating stretcher prior to coupling into the 3-mirror amplifier cavity. After amplification and recompression, a stable 1kHz Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier system, which delivers 85-fs, $320-{\mu}J$ pulses, was fully constructed.