Chirped pulse amplification (
CPA) is a technique for amplifying an
ultrashort laser pulse up to the
petawatt level with the laser pulse being stretched out temporally and spectrally prior to amplification. CPA is the current state of the art technique which all of the highest power lasers (greater than about 100
terawatts, with the exception of the ~500 TW
National Ignition Facility) in the world currently utilize. Some examples of these lasers are the Vulcan Petawatt Upgrade at the
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's central laser facility, the Diocles Laser at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Gekko Petawatt laser at the Gekko XII facility in the Institute of Laser Engineering at
Osaka University, the OMEGA EP laser at the University of Rochester's
Lab for Laser Energetics and the now dismantled petawatt line on the former
Nova laser at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Apart from these state-of-the-art research systems, a number of commercial manufacturers sell
Ti:sapphire-based CPAs with peak powers of 10 to 100 gigawatts.