Control of the shape of laser pulses amplified in the strong saturation regime

A new criterion for estimating the distortions of quasirectangular pulses in high-power amplifiers is proposed together with a method that allows generation of quasi-rectangular pulses at the output of a high-efficiency amplifier, i. e., in the regime of strong saturation. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated by the example of calculating the neodymium glass amplifier, used for pumping the petawatt parametric amplifier.