A new 20 TW of High-Contrast CPA laser system, was installed and commissioned at Tel-Aviv University.

The high contrast is achieved by employing short-pulse optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (SP-OPCPA) in the front end at energy up to 1 mJ. This followed by further pulse stretching and Ti:sapphire amplification to 0.8 J.
Losses in the pulse compressor yields 0.5 J pulses at 25 fs. The system incorporates a Dazzler (AOPDF) to adjust spectral phase and amplitude of the seed pulse. A Wizzler in the diagnostics package is used to create a control temporal feedback loop with the Dazzler.

I will review the optical design and the methodology used to characterize the pulse contrast, as well as the science which benefits from this unique contrast.