A 10-mJ-level compact CPA system based on Yb:KGW for ultrafast optical parametric amplifier pumping

Abstract

A compact diode-pumped Yb:KGW regenerative amplifier producing 10 Hz, 10-mJ-level picosecond pulses at 1,040 nm is demonstrated. The system is used at the new front end of the PHELIX petawatt laser system to pump an ultrafast optical parametric amplifier for temporal contrast enhancement. Before frequency doubling, a pulse length of ∼1 ps is obtained by using a stretcher/compressor system based on a single large-aperture chirped volume Bragg grating

Taming chaos: 16 mJ picosecond Ho:YLF regenerative amplifier with 0.7 kHz repetition rate

“…Compression of the pulses is planned by exploiting the potential of reverting the beam path in an identical CVBG as used for stretching. Temporal compression of picosecond pulses at the 10‐mJ energy level has been demonstrated in CVBG's already . The spectrum of the amplified pulses as measured with an imaging spectrometer (iHR320, Horiba Scientific) shown in Fig.…”

Ultrahigh temporal contrast performance of the PHELIX petawatt facility

“…The schematics of the uOPA implementation at GSI [4] is depicted in Figure 3, where the oscillator is used to seed a compact CPA laser (OPA pump) used as a pump for a synchronized sub-picosecond OPA. The details on the OPA pump laser are described elsewhere [17] . The rest of the chirped pulse amplifier is made of the short-pulse front end, pre and main amplifiers of the PHELIX facility [1] , whose front end comprises two sequential regenerative amplifiers.…”

Accelerating ions with high-energy short laser pulses from submicrometer thick targets

“…The short (100 fs FWHM) pulses from the oscillator (Mira 900, Coherent) are directly amplified by an uOPA which provides a gain of up to [15] . Any degradation of the nanosecond and picosecond temporal contrast is precluded by using a dedicated laser-diode pumped pump laser with a pulse duration of about 1 ps [23] . This amplified pulse is then used as a clean seed pulse for the PHELIX CPA system.…”