Abstract
Abstract We report on a two-arm hybrid high-power laser system (HPLS) able to deliver 2 × 10 PW femtosecond pulses, developed at the Bucharest-Magurele Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) Facility. A hybrid front-end (FE) based on a Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplifier and a picosecond optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on beta barium borate (BBO) crystals, with a cross-polarized wave (XPW) filter in between, has been developed. It delivers 10 mJ laser pulses, at 10 Hz repetition rate, with more than 70 nm spectral bandwidth and high-intensity contrast, in the range of 1013:1. The high-energy Ti:sapphire amplifier stages of both arms were seeded from this common FE. The final high-energy amplifier, equipped with a 200 mm diameter Ti:sapphire crystal, has been pumped by six 100 J nanosecond frequency doubled Nd:glass lasers, at 1 pulse/min repetition rate. More than 300 J output pulse energy has been obtained by pumping with only 80% of the whole 600 J available pump energy. The compressor has a transmission efficiency of 74% and an output pulse duration of 22.7 fs was measured, thus demonstrating that the dual-arm HPLS has the capacity to generate 10 PW peak power femtosecond pulses. The reported results represent the cornerstone of the ELI-NP 2 × 10 PW femtosecond laser facility, devoted to fundamental and applied nuclear physics research.
Highlights
In the past several years, there has been significant progress in developing femtosecond high-power laser systems (HPLSs) by using a chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique in combination with laser media having broad emission spectral bandwidth[1] and by using opticalThe first PW laser was based on a hybrid Ti:sapphire– Nd:glass laser system[3]
PW peak power pulses have been obtained in allTi:sapphire systems, which amplify stretched laser pulses recompressible to a few tens of femtoseconds duration, but with a significantly lower output pulse energy compared with Nd:glass lasers[4,5]
In this paper we describe what is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first two-arm hybrid HPLS capable of generating 2 × 10 PW peak power femtosecond pulses
Summary
In the past several years, there has been significant progress in developing femtosecond high-power laser systems (HPLSs) by using a chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique in combination with laser media having broad emission spectral bandwidth[1] and by using optical. In order to preserve a broad amplification bandwidth, special techniques were used, such as cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation[15,16], spectrum management using spectral filters[14], and hybrid amplification in femtosecond laser systems, based on noncollinear OPCPA (NOPCPA) at the low-energy level in BBO crystals and CPA in large-aperture Ti:sapphire crystals at the high-energy level[7,10,13]. A single-shot 4.9 PW femtosecond laser system, based on low-energy picosecond OPCPA in BBO crystals and highenergy nanosecond OPCPA in large lithium triborate (LBO) crystals in the 800 nm spectral bandwidth, with less than 20 fs amplified pulse duration and high-intensity contrast, has been reported[12].
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