Femtosecond terawatt pulses by multi-dimensional passive coherent beam combination with a Ti:sapphire amplifier

We demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, the simultaneous implementation of chirped-pulse amplification and fully passive filled-aperture coherent beam combination (CBC) of spatiotemporally separated four pulses with a Ti:sapphire amplifier. The system delivers what we believe to be a record-breaking broadband pulse energy of 73 mJ with a broad spectral bandwidth of 34 nm. After compression to 41 fs, the system achieves a peak power of over 1.2 terawatts. We believe that these results represent the highest peak power ever reported in any filled-aperture CBC approach.