White light generation and pulse compression with a Ti:Sapphire high energy oscillator

220-nJ, 42-fs, 5.25-MHz pulses from a long-cavity Ti:Sapphire chirped pulse oscillator were spectrally broadened by nonlinear propagation in a Sapphire plate. The chirp was subsequently compensated with dispersive mirrors. After farfield spatial filtering the compressor delivered 80-nJ, sub-15-fs pulses at 5.25 MHz. A novel 500-nJ Oscillator has been developed in order to investigate the energy-scaling potential of this compression scheme. 16-fs 130-nJ compressed pulses were obtained with this source. A second compression stage has been calculated and designed in order to reduce the pulse duration down to < 10 fs.