High-energy ultrafast thin-disk amplifiers

TRUMPF Scientific Lasers provides ultrafast laser sources for the scientific community with high pulse energies and high average power. All systems are based on the industrialized TRUMPF thin-disk technology. Regenerative amplifiers systems with multi-millijoule pulses, kilohertz repetition rates and picosecond pulse durations are available. Record values of 220mJ at 1kHz could be demonstrated originally developed for pumping optical parametric amplifiers. A huge step will be to combine high energies, 1J per pulse, with average powers of several hundred watts to a kilowatt. Multipass amplifiers based on the thin-disk technology were successfully used to realize picosecond amplifiers with more than 2kW of average power. Nevertheless, the pulse energy was in the μJ or low mJ range. At TRUMPF Scientific Lasers these experiences will lead the way to set-up a system running at 1kHz repetition rate and a target pulse energy of 1J. Within the paper the roadmap to a Joule system will be presented as well as first results from a laboratory set-up.