Sapphire Chirped-pulse Amplification System Research Articles

Reducing temporal pedestal in a Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system by using a stretcher based on two concave mirrors.

We demonstrate the temporal pedestal suppression in a Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification laser system. The far-field spectral phase noise can be avoided by using a stretcher based on two concave mirrors in the system, reducing the intensity and the time range of the amplified pulse's pedestal. At the amplified energy of 1.7 J, the contrast measurement showed that the pedestal intensity was at a level of about 10-10 within a 10 ps time window near the main pulse. In the proton acceleration experiment, a 10 nm thickness CH target was irradiated by the high-contrast pulse with the focused intensity of ∼1.4×1020W/cm2, which generated a proton beam with a cutoff energy of 16 MeV.

Terawatt chirped pulse Raman amplified laser for two-color experiments

We report the generation of a two-color terawatt (TW) laser by the insertion of a three-stage barium nitrate Raman shifter and amplifier system into a conventional Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system. The Raman subsystem produces a pulse that is shifted from 800 to 873 nm and is amplified and compressed to TW scales (140 mJ and 140 fs) and then recombined with the 45-TW 800-nm fundamental pulse.

Wavefront evolution of the signal beam in Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplifier**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61775223) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB1603).

We studied the evolution of wavefront aberration (WFA) of a signal beam during amplification in a Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. The results verified that the WFA of the amplified laser beam has little relation with the change of the pump beam energies. Transverse parasitic lasing that might occur in CPA hardly affects the wavefront of the signal beam. Thermal effects were also considered in this study, and the results show that the thermal effect cumulated in multiple amplification processes also has no obvious influence on the wavefront of the signal beam for a single-shot frequency. The results presented in this paper confirmed experimentally that the amplification in a Ti:sapphire CPA system has little impact on the WFA of the signal beam and it is very helpful for wavefront correction of single-shot PW and multi-PW laser systems based on Ti:sapphire.

Spatial quality improvement of a Ti:Sapphire laser beam by modal filtering

We present a study on the improvement of the spatial quality of a laser beam, called modal filtering, suitable to high-energy lasers. The method is theoretically compared with the classical pinhole filtering technique in the case of an astigmatic Gaussian beam, illustrating, in this particular case, its efficiency for filtering low spatial frequencies. Experimental study of the modal filtering of a temporally chirped beam from a Ti:Sapphire chirped-pulseamplification system is presented. Beam profile, wavefront and pulse duration after compression were measured, showing a dramatic improvement of beam quality and no modifications of the temporal distribution. High-order harmonic generation in a rare gas, a highly nonlinear process which is phase-matching dependent, was used to test the effect of the filter and showed a clear enhancement of the generation.

Nondegenerate parametric generation of 2.2-mJ, few-cycle 2.05-μm pulses using a mixed phase matching scheme

We describe the production of 2.2-mJ, ∼6 optical-cycle-long mid-infrared laser pulses with a carrier wavelength of 2.05 μm in a two-stage β-BaB2O4 nondegenerate optical parametric amplifier design with a mixed phase matching scheme, which is pumped by a standard Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system. It is demonstrated that relatively high pulse energies, short pulse durations, high stability, and excellent beam profiles can be obtained using this simple approach, even without the use of optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification.

Chirped pulse amplification of femtosecond pulse sequences in a Ti: sapphire laser

An amplified femtosecond pulse sequence is generated in a multi-TW Ti: sapphire chirped pulse amplification system (JG-II facility). The pulse interval of the pulse sequence is 14.8 ns, corresponding to a frequency of 67.5 MHz. The compressed pulse sequence can reach 122 mJ in 19 independent pulses with a pulse width of about 60 fs. The energy of the pulses declines from 20 mJ to 0.5 mJ, corresponding to a peak power from 1011 W to 1010 W. The pulse sequence has important applications in lengthening the lifetime of the laser produced plasma channel in air and in microfabrication.

Ultrabroadband TW-class Ti:sapphire laser system with adjustable central wavelength, bandwidth and multi-color operation

We demonstrate a versatile tunable and highly stable ultrabroadband Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplification system with a compressed pulse energy of 20 mJ at 100 Hz repetition rate. High power Ti:Sa systems in principle do not offer wavelength tunability due to gain narrowing. Here we demonstrate transform limited pulse generation from 15 fs to 94 fs with tunable central wavelength (λc from 755 nm to 845 nm) and bandwidth (130 nm<Δλ<16 nm) as well as multi-color, time synchronized, sub-100 fs pulses with user defined central wavelength separation. The unique wavelength tunability capabilities have been expanded into the UV and deep-UV by second and third harmonic generation with excellent energy stability. Enhanced energy stability is achieved by multiplexing six ultrastable diode-based solid state pump lasers.

High-contrast, high-intensity laser pulse generation using a nonlinear preamplifier in a Ti:sapphire laser system

We report a high-contrast, high-intensity Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system that incorporates a nonlinear preamplifier based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). By cooling the Ti:sapphire crystal in the final amplifier down to 77 K, the chirped-pulses are amplified to 2.9 J at a 10 Hz repetition rate without a thermal lensing effect. Pulse compression down to 19 fs duration obtained after amplification indicates a peak power of 80 TW. With the OPCPA, the temporal contrast is significantly improved to better than 7x10(-9) in a few picoseconds interval prior to the main laser pulse.

Chirped-pulse Raman amplification for two-color, high-intensity laser experiments

We report generation and compression of millijoule-level first Stokes sideband (873nm) of 800nm TW pulses by inserting a multi-stage barium nitrate Raman shifter-amplifier into a conventional Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplification system.

Intense femtosecond pulse shaping using a fused-silica spatial light modulator

We present the design concept of a setup of a pulse shaper to be used for high-power femtosecond lasers. The pulse shaper is constructed from a high-damage threshold fused-silica spatial light modulator and a 4-f optical system based on the design concept to avoid optical damage. We have successfully demonstrated a pulse compression of 20fs, 5mJ pulses obtained from a 1kHz repetition rate Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplification system at an average power of 5W.

Design and construction of a TW-class 12-fs Ti:Sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system

We describe a design and a construction of a TW-class 12-fs Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system. We developed a broadband pulse stretcher, a broadband gain-narrowing compensator, broadband high-energy mirrors, high-energy dichroic chirped mirrors, a dispersion compensator, and a broadband pulse compressor for /spl sim/10-fs pulse generation. Utilizing these optical devices, we demonstrated a generation of 12-fs pulses from a 10-Hz-repetition-rate Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse multipass amplifier system and a 1-kHz-repetition-rate Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse regenerative amplifier system. Optimized designs of broadband Ti:sapphire amplifiers with multilayer gain-narrowing compensators and an adaptive dispersion compensator with a spatial light modulator contribute to the shorter pulse amplification.

0.85-PW, 33-fs Ti:sapphire laser.

We have successfully produced a laser pulse with a peak power of 0.85 PW for a pulse duration of 33 fs in a four-stage Ti:sapphire amplifier chain based on chirped-pulse amplification. To our knowledge this result represents the highest peak power pulses yet produced in any Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system.

Large-ratio stretch and recompression of sub-10-fs pulses utilizing dispersion managed devices and a spatial light modulator

We demonstrate stretch and recompression of a sub-10-fs pulse utilizing a broadband pulse stretcher, a dispersion compensator with a spatial light modulator, and a broadband pulse compressor for ∼10-fs Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system. Our calculation suggests that the dispersion compensator is useful for dispersion compensation of a Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system, including multi-pass amplifiers.

Study on Design of 10 TW Class 10 fs Ti:sapphire Laser.

In this paper, we report the design considerations for a 10 TW, 10 fs class Ti: sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system and technically describe a gain narrowing compensator, a pulse stretcher and compressor with a wide spectral range, and high-energy mirrors also with a wide spectral range. These devices are key optical components for generating 10 TW, 10 fs class laser pulses.