Development of an ultra-bright laser and an application to multi-photon ionization

Thesis/Dissertation · Sat Dec 31 19:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:7019940

Strickland, D T

Conventional amplifiers have not been able to amplify short pulses to high energies either because the stored energy of the gain medium was too low or the high peak powers in the amplifier would cause nonlinear effects and eventually damage to occur. Chirped radar was developed over forty years ago to solve a similar problem in the radar field. The optical analog to chirped radar, Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) has been studied here and a prototype laser system has been developed. The CPA technique uses fiber and grating pulse compression techniques. Short pulses are stretched several times their initial duration by group velocity dispersion, either in an optical fiber or a pair of gratings. The long pulses are then amplified in a high energy gain medium, without reaching the peak power limitation. The high energy pulse can be recompressed to its original pulse duration by a second dispersive delay line, with the opposite dispersion. The prototype system focuses 50 ps pulses from a cw mode-locked Nd:YLF oscillator into an optical fiber. The bandwidth is stretched to approximately 4 nm and the pulse width is stretched to 150 ps. The duration is further stretched by a grating pair to 500 ps. The long pulses are amplified in three stages to an energy of 0.5 J. The amplified pulses are compressed to a 1 ps duration by a second pair of gratings.

• Research Organization: Rochester Univ., NY (USA)
• OSTI ID: 7019940
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
426002* -- Engineering-- Lasers & Masers-- (1990-)
AMPLIFICATION
AMPLIFIERS
DESIGN
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
FIBERS
IONIZATION
LASERS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
NEODYMIUM LASERS
OPTICAL FIBERS
OPTICAL RADAR
OSCILLATORS
PULSE AMPLIFIERS
PULSE TECHNIQUES
RADAR
RANGE FINDERS
SOLID STATE LASERS