Generation of high-contrast, 30 fs, 1.5 PW laser pulses

A high-contrast, 30 fs, 1.5 PW Ti:sapphire laser has been developed for research on high field physics. The maximum output energy of 60.2 J was obtained from a booster amplifier pumped by four frenquency-doubled Nd:glass laser systems. Parasitic lasing was suppressed by index matching fluid with absorption dye and the careful manipulation of the time delay between the seed and pump pulses. After compression, the measured pulse duration was 30.2 ± 1.8 fs, and the output energy was 44.5 J, yielding a peak power of about 1.5 PW. A saturable absorber and two ultrafast Pockels cells were installed in the front-end system for the minimization of the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and pre-pulse intensity. An adaptive optics system was implemented for obtaining the near diffraction-limited focal spot.

[1]  S Yu Tenyakov,et al.  Contrast degradation in a chirped-pulse amplifier due to generation of prepulses by postpulses. , 2008, Optics express.

[2]  Robin Marjoribanks,et al.  Plasma mirrors for ultrahigh-intensity optics , 2007 .

[3]  Olivier Albert,et al.  10(-10) temporal contrast for femtosecond ultraintense lasers by cross-polarized wave generation. , 2005, Optics letters.

[4]  D Kiefer,et al.  Radiation-pressure acceleration of ion beams driven by circularly polarized laser pulses. , 2009, Physical review letters.

[5]  Mikhail Kalashnikov,et al.  Limits of the temporal contrast for CPA lasers with beams of high aperture , 2009, Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics.

[6]  D. Price,et al.  Suppression of parasitic lasing in large-aperture Ti:sapphire laser amplifiers. , 1999, Optics letters.

[7]  Fulvio Cornolti,et al.  Laser acceleration of ion bunches at the front surface of overdense plasmas. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[8]  Gerard Jamelot,et al.  Design and demonstration of a high-energy booster amplifier for a high-repetition rate petawatt class laser system. , 2007, Optics letters.

[9]  Tae Jun Yu,et al.  Spatio-temporal characterization of double plasma mirror for ultrahigh contrast and stable laser pulse , 2011 .

[10]  Zhiyi Wei,et al.  High-contrast 1.16 PW Ti:sapphire laser system combined with a doubled chirped-pulse amplification scheme and a femtosecond optical-parametric amplifier. , 2011, Optics letters.

[11]  K Yamakawa,et al.  0.85-PW, 33-fs Ti:sapphire laser. , 2003, Optics letters.

[12]  Gerard Mourou,et al.  Generation and characterization of the highest laser intensities (1022 W/cm2) , 2004, CLEO 2004.

[13]  3D Modeling of amplification processes in CPA laser amplifiers , 2005 .

[14]  J. Kieffer,et al.  Pedestal cleaning for high laser pulse contrast ratio with a 100 TW class laser system. , 2011, Optics Express.

[15]  Gerard Mourou,et al.  Compression of amplified chirped optical pulses , 1985 .

[16]  P. Norreys,et al.  Vulcan petawatt: Design, operation and interactions at 5 × 10 20 Wcm −2 , 2005 .

[17]  Karoly Osvay,et al.  Analysis and optimization of optical parametric chirped pulse amplification , 2002 .

[18]  Klaus Ertel,et al.  ASE suppression in a high energy Titanium sapphire amplifier. , 2008, Optics express.

[19]  Tae Jun Yu,et al.  0.1 Hz 1.0 PW Ti:sapphire laser. , 2010, Optics letters.