ICAN as a new laser paradigm for high energy, high average power femtosecond pulses

The application of petawatt lasers to scientific and technological problems is advancing rapidly. The usefulness of these applications will depend on being able to produce petawatt pulses at much higher repetition rates than is presently possible. The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) consortium seeks to design high repetition rate petawatt lasers using large scale coherent beam combination of femtosecond pulse amplifiers built from optical fibres. This combination of technologies has the potential to overcome many of the hurdles to high energy, high average power pulsed lasers, opening up applications and meeting societal challenges.