Methods of generation of 10-Hz, 100-TW optical pulses
- Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States)
- Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Edward L. Ginzton Lab.
- Technische Univ. Wien (Austria)
Chirped pulse amplification has now become a common method by which nonlinear effects may be avoided during the amplification of short optical pulses in solid state amplifiers. Pulses of several tens of terawatts have been generated in Nd:glass based systems typically with pulse durations on the order of a picosecond. These systems are limited in pulse duration by the availability of suitably short seed pulses and by the limited bandwidth of the amplification medium. With the development of broader bandwidth laser materials, such as Ti:sapphire, low energy seed pulses on the order of 10 fs can now be routinely generated. The amplification of these pulses to terawatt peak powers presents several challenges not present at the 100-fs to 1-ps level. In particular, high-order-phase distortions must be carefully controlled, gain narrowing during amplification must be minimized, refractive optical elements must be avoided and broader band reflective optics must be developed. In this paper, important aspects of a first generation system which has produced 4-TW, 30-fs pulses at repetition rates of 10 Hz will be reviewed. Methods for extension of this system and the design of a 10-Hz, 100-TW, 15-fs laser will be discussed.
- OSTI ID:
- 113516
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950226--; ISBN 0-8194-1724-6
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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