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Ultrafast and broadband laser sources in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectral domain (3-8 μm) find important applications in many fields, such as metrology, imaging and spectroscopy. Most of the available mid-IR sources operate at high repetition rates and high stability but they are limited either in their spectral range, peak power or pulse duration. Although the high repetition rate is ideal for investigation of processes with low cross sections, energies below the mJ-level are not optimal for driving processes such as soft x-ray high harmonic generation, and the scaling in energy of the mid-IR pulses is of high interest. KTA is a birefrigent material which has a high laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) and a moderate nonlinear coefficient (deff ~ 2.1 pm/V). Another interesting material is magnesium oxide doped lithium niobate (MgO:LN) which has a high nonlinear coefficient (deff ~ 3.9 pm/V) allowing for large phase matching bandwidth and has been demonstrated at intensities as high as 25 GW/cm2. In this work we evaluate numerically the individual and combined use of two nonlinear crystals, KTA and MgO:LN to conceptually propose a 3 μm, multi-mJ-level (5 mJ), 10 Hz, sub-50 fs OPCPA laser pumped by a 1.03 μm, > 60 mJ, 10 Hz, ps-level Yb-based CPA and discuss its performance supported by comprehensive simulation data.
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