SBS pulse compression applied to a commercial Q-switch Nd-YAG laser

Journal Article · Mon May 05 04:00:00 EDT 1997 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.53852· OSTI ID:21172364

Aliaga-Rossel, R; Bayley, J; Mamin, A; Nizienko, Y ^[1]

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1. Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)

In optical diagnosis of dense Z-pinches, sub-nanosecond laser pulses are required in order to freeze the movement of the plasma during the probing. Commercial lasers can provide such type of pulses but they are either very expensive, or they have a very low energy per pulse. A technique that uses Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) to compress a 8 ns pulse of a commercial Q-switched Nd-YAG laser is reported here. To carry out this passive compression technique, a frequency doubled laser pulse of 10 ns was focused into a single SBS gas cell, 2 m long, filled with a mixture of argon and sulphurhexafluoride (SF{sub 6}) at a total pressure of 40 bar. A shorter and high intensity pulse was reflected from the cell (created by SBS) and it travelled back along its original path until it was separated from its original direction by using a dichroic polariser. The pumping volume of the SBS cell, the convergence of the incident beam and the pressure of the gas cell, were optimised to maximise both temporal compression and the output energy. Pulses of 10 ns were compressed to less than 400 ps with a conversion efficiency of 80%. This SBS pulse compression system has been used to make most of the optical measurements of a dense fibre pinch plasma produced in the MAGPIE generator.

• OSTI ID: 21172364
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 409; ISSN APCPCS; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ARGON
BRILLOUIN EFFECT
FIBERS
LINEAR Z PINCH DEVICES
LONGITUDINAL PINCH
NEODYMIUM LASERS
PLASMA
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA DIAGNOSTICS
PLASMA PRODUCTION
PULSES
Q-SWITCHING
SULFUR FLUORIDES