OPCPA using beams shaped by diffractive optical elements

Optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) is becoming a widely accepted technique for the generation of high energy ultrashort laser pulses. Flat-top spatial profile pump beams can improve the efficiency of OPCPA, however such beams can be energetically costly to generate and are difficult to implement for low pump energy systems. An elegant and efficient solution to the generation of flat-top spatial profiles is the use of a diffractive optical element (DOE), however these devices distort the geometric phase of the pulses, possibly making them unsuitable for phase coherent interactions such as OPCPA.