Dispersion management for a 100 PW level laser using a mismatched-grating compressor

Abstract

We report the dispersion management based on mismatched-grating compressor for a 100 PW level laser, which utilizes optical parametric chirped pulse amplification and meanwhile features large chirped pulse duration and ultra-broadband spectrum. The numerical calculation indicates that the amplified pulses with 4 ns chirped pulse duration and 210 nm spectral bandwidth can be directly compressed to sub-13 fs, which is close to the Fourier-transform-limit (FTL). More importantly, the tolerances of mismatched-grating compressor to the misalignment of stretcher, the error of desired grating groove density, and the variation of material dispersion are comprehensively analyzed, which is crucial important for its practical application. The results demonstrate that good tolerances and near FTL compressed pulses can be achieved simultaneously, just by keeping a balance between the residual second-, third-and fourth-order dispersion in the laser system. This work can offer a meaningful guideline for the design and construction of 100 PW level lasers.

eXawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies

“…Most of the proposed designs for 100-PW lasers are based on this architecture. Table 1 presents the parameters of the XCELS project given in this paper, as well as of the projects proposed in China [20][21][22][23][24] , the USA [25,26] and Japan [27][28][29][30][31] (see also reviews Refs. [2,5]).…”

Specifications and control of spatial frequency errors of components in two-beam laser static holographic exposure for pulse compression grating fabrication

“…The results of the MSF and HSF errors mentioned in Equation (11) are mixed together, which is not convenient for the judgment of practical measurement results. We decompose each spatial frequency error specification of the exposure mirror, as shown in Table 2.…”

“…However, with the proposal and construction of the 100 PW class or even higher power laser systems [ 11 ] , the size limitation of the grating has been the bottleneck. Manufacturing techniques for large-aperture diffraction gratings [ 12 ] historically began with mechanical ruling, which was later accompanied by mainstream two-beam interference lithography (often simply cited as holography) and other representative techniques, for example, scanning beam interference lithography (SBIL) [ 13 , 14 ] , holographic phase aperture synthesis, grating stitching [ 15 , 16 ] .…”

A novel small-scale self-focusing suppression method for post-compression in high peak power lasers

“…Such super-intense lasers can bring several significant breakthroughs and advance for high-field sciences [7][8]. Nowadays, some countries have also commissioned the construction of 100 PW level ultrahigh peak power lasers [9][10][11][12], to pursue higher laser intensity and hence to explore frontier sciences. As is well known, the laser peak power can be enhanced by increasing the pulse energy or by further shortening the pulse duration after the laser compressor.…”