Generation of high-energy sub-20 fs pulses tunable in the 250-310 nm region by frequency doubling of a high-power noncollinear optical parametric amplifier

We report on the generation of powerful sub-20 fs deep UV pulses with 10 mu J level energy and broadly tunable in the 250-310 nm range. These pulses are produced by frequency doubling a high-power noncollinear optical parametric amphfier and compressed by a pair of MgF(2) prisms to an almost transformr-limited duration. Our results provide a power scaling by an order of magnitude with respect to previous works.