ARCTURUS laser: a versatile high-contrast, high-power multi-beam laser system

Abstract

With the latest configuration, the Ti:Sa laser system ARCTURUS (Düsseldorf University, Germany) operates with a double-chirped pulse amplification (CPA) architecture delivering pulses with an energy of 7 J before compression in each of the two high-power beams. By the implementation of a plasma mirror system, the intrinsic laser contrast is enhanced up to $10^{-12}$ on a time scale of hundreds of picoseconds, before the main peak. The laser system has been used in various configurations for advanced experiments and different studies have been carried out employing the high-power laser beams as a single, high-intensity interaction beam ( $I\approx 10^{20}~\text{W}/\text{cm}^{2}$ ), in dual- and multi-beam configurations or in a pump–probe arrangement.

Relativistic electron acceleration by surface plasma waves excited with high intensity laser pulses

“…The experiments were carried out at the Ti:sapphire Arcturus laser facility of the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf [30,31] . The laser system can deliver pulses with energies up to 7 J at the central wavelength of λ L = 800 nm and a pulse duration of 30 fs (FWHM) in p-polarization.…”

“…The surface modulations of GTs are very sensitive to the preplasma generated by the rising edge of the laser pulse as only tens of nanometers of preplasma will fill the surface structures. A double stage pulse cleaning system which includes an XPW module [35] and a plasma mirror (PM) arrangement [36,37] improves the prepulse-to-pulse laser contrast up to 10 −12 in the 100s of ps range [30] and the temporal profile of the laser pulse is shown in Figure 2(a). The graph shows the temporal profile of the laser pulse after the vacuum compressor measured by a SEQUOIA third-order cross-correlator [38] (blue line).…”

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

“…At The Institute for Laser and Plasma Physics, Heinrich-Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany is the Arcturus system [100] . This is a two-beam Ti:sapphire system where the pulses in each beamline are compressed to 30 fs and transported onto the interaction chamber with 50% efficiency.…”

Study of the parameter dependence of laser-accelerated protons from a hydrogen cluster source

“…Up to 7 J of energy before compression, at a 30 fs pulse duration in a 5 Hz operation mode can be delivered. Utilising an XPW contrast-enhancing unit, the laser contrast was measured to be 1 × 10 −8 at 80 ps before the main pulse [32]. A thin (1 mm) anti-reflex coated pellicle-window was implemented before the interaction chamber, to protect the compressor gratings from hydrogen gas or other hydro-carbon contamination of the pump-system.…”