The opportunity of high average and high peak power lasers

Abstract

Summary form only given. Over the last few decades the cost reductions and performance increase of diode laser technology has advanced to the point that it has now become a very attractive and generic means of driving laser systems. Diode pumped technology has found widespread uptake in the industrial sector - multi kW CW powers are routine and a wide variety of low energy pulsed systems have been reported - many are commercially available. However the development of pulsed diode pumped systems capable of operating at mutli kW and higher average power levels with very high pulse energy (100'sJ - kJ's) has been very limited.In this presentation I will report on the development of a new diode pumped high energy laser concept at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). Known as “DiPOLE”, it has been developed to be an intrinsically scalable system, providing a high average power basis for energetic pulse production from Joules to kiloJoules. Based on large aperture ceramic Yb:YAG configured in a novel geometry and operated at cryogenic temperatures it is a concept that is, in principle, scalable from the Joule level to the multi kiloJoule level. A prototype system, operating at close to 10 J / 10 Hz has been constructed, and a 100 J / 10 Hz version is under development. The DiPOLE architecture is being developed, in part, to capitalize on the applications potential of high peak power (~PW+ level) lasers but operating high average power levels (multi kW). This offers a truly exciting opportunity for both new scientific advance and, possibly of more relevance in today's climate, of new, emergent commercial and industrial applications. Today's generally flashlamp pumped high peak power lasers can be unique, super bright, super fast sources of very energetic electrons, protons, neutrons, X-Rays, g-Rays, THz radiation etc. and thus offer a significant applications potential. In some areas it's fair to say they offer a possible capability that cannot be achieved with conventional non-laser based source technology. Certainly, driving high peak powers lasers with diode technology offers an efficient, compact and reliable route for such an applications environment to develop Thus, in addition to DiPOLE, I will touch on achievements in our development of the associated high peak power technology necessary for applications, highlighting our plans at RAL for their combination, and finally consider some of the downstream applications opportunities we are working on.