As a driving source for many nonlinear vortex phenomena

such as the generation of isolated attosecond optical vortices

terahertz vortices

etc.

terawatt-class few-cycle short-wave infrared vortex lasers are now attracting widespread attention. However

because the vortex characteristics of optical vortices are difficult to maintain in the amplification and compression stages

the generation of high-intensity few-cycle vortex lasers is still in the exploratory stage. In this article

we report 20-Hz

18.6-mJ

60-fs

and 1.45-μm infrared vortex lasers with 1

2

and 3 topological charges successfully generated in an optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system. A clean intensity node at the beam center is observed and highly stable propagation in free space is demonstrated. Moreover

this high-energy vortex pulse is spectrally broadened in multiple thin plates and temporally compressed to 10.59 fs (2.2 optical cycles) with chirped mirrors

corresponding to a peak power of 1.08 TW

while highly preserving the vortex information. We believe that the generated high-energy few-cycle vortex laser has important applications from vortex optics to strong-field physics.