Abstract
It has been shown in the past that pulsed laser systems operating in the so-called “burst mode” are a beneficial approach to generate high peak power laser pulses at high repetition rates suitable for various applications. So far, most high-energy burst-mode laser systems put great effort into generating a homogeneous energy distribution across the burst duration, e.g., by shaping the pump pulse. In this work, we present a new shaping technique, which is able to produce arbitrary energy distributions within the burst by pre-shaping the seed pulse burst with a Pockels cell. Furthermore, this technique allows for the precompensation of any static modulations across the burst, which may be introduced during the subsequent amplification process. Therefore, a pulse burst with a uniform energy distribution can also be generated. The method is tested with an ultra-short pulse burst mode laser amplifier system producing bursts of a 1 ms duration with a pulse repetition rate of 1 MHz and a maximum output power of 800 W during the burst. Furthermore, a method to predict the influence of the amplifier on a non-uniformly shaped burst is presented and successfully tested to produce a pre-defined pulse shape after amplification.
Highlights
The so-called “burst mode” is a special operation scheme for a pulsed laser system
The laser system approaches the efficiency of a continuously-pumped system, while due to the limited time of operation, the cooling requirements for the components are vastly reduced in comparison to continuously-operated systems with a similar output power
We have demonstrated a method for the temporal shaping of ultra short pulse bursts by loss modulation using a Pockels cell
Summary
The so-called “burst mode” is a special operation scheme for a pulsed laser system. In this mode, the system produces pulses at a relatively high energy and repetition rate, for a short period in time, ranging from some microseconds to several tens of milliseconds. The laser system approaches the efficiency of a continuously-pumped system, while due to the limited time of operation, the cooling requirements for the components are vastly reduced in comparison to continuously-operated systems with a similar output power This allows one to realize comparably small systems with outstanding performance parameters. In addition to these advantages, several applications have been developed that use the unique parameters offered by a burst-mode laser Among these are, for example, the detection of fast processes in combustion diagnostics with methods like particle image velocimetry (PIV), planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) analysis, planar Rayleigh scattering or planar Doppler velocimetry (PDV) [1,2,3,4]. Such pulse bursts may be applied in laser ablation [5,6] or in photoinjectors, which are used to create electron pulses in conventional particle accelerators [7]
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