Generation of 25-TW Femtosecond Laser Pulses at 515 nm with Extremely High Temporal Contrast

We report on the frequency doubling of femtosecond laser pulses at 1030 nm center wavelength generated from the fully diode-pumped laser system POLARIS. The newly generated pulses at a center wavelength of 515 nm have a pulse energy of 3 J with a pulse duration of 120 fs. On the basis of initially ultra-high contrast seed pulses we expect a temporal intensity contrast better 10 17 200 ps before the peak of the main pulse. We analyzed the temporal intensity contrast from milliseconds to femtoseconds with a dynamic range covering more than 20 orders of magnitude. The pulses were focussed with a f/2-focussing parabola resulting in a peak intensity exceeding 10 20 W / cm 2 . The peak power and intensity are to the best of our knowledge the highest values for 515 nm-laser-pulses achieved so far.

[1]  H. Schonnagel,et al.  Double chirped-pulse-amplification laser: a way to clean pulses temporally. , 2005, Optics letters.

[2]  Joachim Hein,et al.  16.6 J chirped femtosecond laser pulses from a diode-pumped Yb:CaF2 amplifier. , 2014, Optics letters.

[3]  Vladimir Chvykov,et al.  Relativistic plasma shutter for ultraintense laser pulses. , 2009, Applied physics letters.

[4]  Hamish Johnston.  Physics for our future , 2013 .

[5]  Joachim Hein,et al.  Ultra-high contrast frontend for high peak power fs-lasers at 1030 nm. , 2014, Optics express.

[6]  David Hillier,et al.  Ultrahigh contrast from a frequency-doubled chirped-pulse-amplification beamline. , 2013, Applied optics.

[7]  J. Hein,et al.  Full characterization of the amplified spontaneous emission from a diode-pumped high-power laser system. , 2014, Optics express.

[8]  Eric Esarey,et al.  Physics of laser-driven plasma-based electron accelerators , 2009 .

[9]  David Neely,et al.  Pulse fidelity in ultra-high-power (petawatt class) laser systems , 2014, High Power Laser Science and Engineering.

[10]  G Korn,et al.  Highly efficient second-harmonic generation of ultraintense Nd:glass laser pulses. , 1995, Optics letters.

[11]  Antonio Lucianetti,et al.  High-Contrast, High-Intensity Petawatt-Class Laser and Applications , 2015, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[12]  Marco Borghesi,et al.  Ion acceleration by superintense laser-plasma interaction , 2013, 1302.1775.

[13]  David Eimerl,et al.  Effects of cubic nonlinearity on frequency doubling of high-power laser pulses , 1996 .

[14]  Y. Izawa,et al.  High-power and high-contrast optical parametric chirped pulse amplification in β-BaB 2 O 4 crystal , 2003 .

[15]  Colin N. Danson,et al.  Petawatt class lasers worldwide , 2015, High Power Laser Science and Engineering.

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

[17]  Zulfikar Najmudin,et al.  Optimization of relativistic laser–ion acceleration , 2014, High Power Laser Science and Engineering.

[18]  Joachim Hein,et al.  The all-diode-pumped laser system POLARIS – an experimentalist’s tool generating ultra-high contrast pulses with high energy , 2014, High Power Laser Science and Engineering.

[19]  K Nemoto,et al.  Second-harmonic generation and wave-front correction of a terawatt laser system. , 2000, Optics letters.

[20]  Gerard Mourou,et al.  Suppression of the amplified spontaneous emission in chirped-pulse-amplification lasers by clean high-energy seed-pulse injection , 1998 .

[21]  Joachim Hein,et al.  The generation of amplified spontaneous emission in high‐power CPA laser systems , 2015, Laser & photonics reviews.

[22]  Tae Jun Yu,et al.  Enhancement of electron energy to the multi-GeV regime by a dual-stage laser-wakefield accelerator pumped by petawatt laser pulses. , 2013, Physical review letters.

[23]  M M Murnane,et al.  Prepulse energy suppression for high-energy ultrashort pulses using self-induced plasma shuttering. , 1991, Optics letters.

[24]  G. Lambert,et al.  Femtosecond x rays from laser-plasma accelerators , 2013, 1301.5066.

[25]  Junji Kawanaka,et al.  High Power Lasers and Their New Applications , 2008 .