Abstract
Abstract A petawatt facility fully based on noncollinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (NOPCPA) technology, Vulcan OPPEL (Vulcan OPCPA PEtawatt Laser), is presented. This system will be coupled with the existing hybrid-CPA/OPCPA VULCAN laser system (500 J, 500 fs beamline; 250 J, ns regime beamline) based on Nd:glass amplification. Its pulse duration (20 times shorter) combined with the system design will allow the auxiliary beamline and its secondary sources to be used as probe beams for longer pulses and their interactions with targets. The newly designed system will be mainly dedicated to electron beam generation, but could also be used to perform a variety of particle acceleration and optical radiation detection experimental campaigns. In this communication, we present the entire beamline design discussing the technology choices and the design supported by extensive simulations for each system section. Finally, we present experimental results and details of our commissioned NOPCPA picosecond front end, delivering 1.5 mJ, ~180 nm (1/e2) of bandwidth compressed to sub-15 fs.
Highlights
A petawatt facility fully based on noncollinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (NOPCPA) technology, Vulcan OPPEL (Vulcan OPCPA PEtawatt Laser), is presented
We have designed a laser system fully based on the optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) where the last two amplification stages are pumped by two Nd:glass laser systems
We have shown the experimental results and the details regarding our commissioned NOPCPA picosecond front end
Summary
Intense ultra-short pulse lasers, in the range of hundreds of terawatts (TW) to the petawatt (PW) level, are unique tools for a wide range of experiments contributing to the advancement of many scientific research areas, such as laboratory astrophysics[1], high-energy-density physics[2], particle acceleration schemes[3, 4] and others. To overcome the limitations of the existing high-peakpower systems in delivering the generation of state-ofthe-art lasers, the combination of the technology developed for sub-30 fs Ti:sapphire laser systems with the energies provided by nanosecond laser systems To reach this goal, we have designed a laser system fully based on the optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) where the last two amplification stages are pumped by two Nd:glass laser systems. Adopting initial amplification stages with a pump duration of a few picoseconds, the contrast is highly improved outside this time window Thermal effects such as thermal aberrations[12, 13] and thermal lensing, relevant in high-average-power pulse generation, are much weaker when compared with a laser gain medium because of the instantaneous nature of the process.
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