Nonlinear pulse compression in a gas-filled multipass cell.

We present an efficient method for compressing sub-picosecond pulses at 200 W average power with 2 mJ pulse energy in a multipass cell filled with different gases. We demonstrate spectral broadening by more than a factor of five using neon, argon, and nitrogen as nonlinear media. The 210 fs input pulses are compressed down to 37 fs and 35 GW peak power with a beam quality factor of 1.3×1.5 at a power throughput of >93%. This concept represents an excellent alternative to hollow-core fiber-based compression schemes and optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs).