Chirped pulse amplification——from ultrafast laser technology to ultraintense physics

The Nobel Prize in 2018 was announced that three scientists won the physics prize for their pioneering inventions in the field of laser technology. Among them, Professor Arthur Ashkin shared half of the prize for the invention of optical tweezers; Professor Gérard Mourou and Associate Professor Donna Strickland shared the other half for the co-invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA). As a major technological innovation to break through the bottleneck of high-intensity laser development, CPA technology since its invention has become the core technology for laser physics research, especially for ultra-fast laser research. In this article, we review the background, principle, configuration of CPA technology and applications.