Analysis of energy-scaling capability of ultrashort pulses via passively combined divided-pulse amplification

The possibility of energy scaling of ultrashort-pulse amplifiers employing both chirpedpulse amplification (CPA) and passively combined divided-pulse amplification (DPA) are analyzed both experimentally and numerically. It turns out that the achievable system efficiency is limited by mainly three effects: saturation in the amplifier, differences in the accumulated nonlinear phase and depolarization effects.