Abstract
It is well known that a titanium doped sapphire (Ti: sapphire) crystal exhibits outstanding features as a laser material. We can easily handle the Ti: sapphire because it is highly stable in humidity, properly obtain high gain for the amplification due to the adequate emission crosssection, and also utilize it in a high-average powered amplifier because it can carry a heavy thermal load due to the high thermal conductivity. The most distinct feature of Ti: sapphire, however, is the broadest gain bandwidth of all the solid laser materials, which can serve the sufficiently broad spectrum to generate sub-10-femtosecond optical pulses. In this review, I introduce how we can generate high-intensity ultrashort pulses from the Ti: sapphire laser with ultrafast optical elements in a mod-locked oscillator and a chirped pulse amplification system, of which pulse duration comes down to sub-10-femtosecond regime.
