16.6 J chirped femtosecond laser pulses from a diode pumped Yb:CaF2 amplifier

We report the amplification of laser pulses at a center wavelength of 1034 nm to an energy of 16.6 J from a fully diode pumped amplifier using Yb:CaF2 as the active medium. Pumped by a total optical power of 300 kW from high-power laser diodes, a gain factor of g = 6.1 was achieved in a nine-pass amplifier configuration agreeing with numerical simulations. A measured spectral bandwidth of 10 nm full width at half maximum, FWHM promises a bandwidth-limited compression of the pulses down to a duration of 150 fs. These are to our knowledge the most energetic laser pulses achieved from a diode pumped chirped pulse amplifier so far.