Generation of Terawatt-Scale Vortex Pulses Based on Optical Parametric Chirped-Pulse Amplification

Abstract

In this letter, we report the demonstration of terawatt (TW)-scale femtosecond vortex laser pulses based on noncollinear optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) centered at 800 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental study of amplification for OPCPA-based vortex pulses to achieve a powerful ultrafast (TWscale) vortex pulse output. In this experiment, a 0.5-mJ broadband chirped vortex pulse was amplified to 47 mJ with a 15-mm-long LiB 3 O 5 crystal. The double-pass grating pair compressor with an efficiency of 65% maintained the beam vortex, and a pulse of width 30.1 fs was obtained, corresponding to a peak power of 1.02 TW. This laser can be used in studies on nonlinear optics and relativistic laser-plasma interactions, compact plasmabased accelerators, and light sources.

Forty-five terawatt vortex ultrashort laser pulses from a chirped-pulse amplification system

“…Researchers used different methods to amplify the vortex light. optical parametric (chirped pulse) amplification (OPA/OPCPA) [22][23] [24] can amplify vortex to microjoule or millijoule level for its ultra-broadband and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In an OPCPA system [24], 0.5-mJ broadband chirped vortex pulse was scaled up to 47 mJ with a 15-mm-long LiB3O5 crystal, the corresponding peak power is about 1 TW.…”

“…optical parametric (chirped pulse) amplification (OPA/OPCPA) [22][23] [24] can amplify vortex to microjoule or millijoule level for its ultra-broadband and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In an OPCPA system [24], 0.5-mJ broadband chirped vortex pulse was scaled up to 47 mJ with a 15-mm-long LiB3O5 crystal, the corresponding peak power is about 1 TW. However, further promotion of the output peak power may be limited by the sizes of the nonlinear optical crystals.…”

Electron pulse train accelerated by a linearly polarized Laguerre–Gaussian laser beam

“…For example, the proposed facility [3,4] that aims to cross the 100 PW limit is expected to be in development over the next decade. Concurrently, new optical techniques for producing helical wave-fronts [15,16,17,18,19,20] are also being developed. There now exist multiple computational [21,22,23,24,17,25,26,27,28,29] and experimental [15,18,30,31,32] studies examining interactions of helical laser beams with plasmas.…”

“…There now exist multiple computational [21,22,23,24,17,25,26,27,28,29] and experimental [15,18,30,31,32] studies examining interactions of helical laser beams with plasmas. There are also some published works on the terawatt scale helical laser production using a chirped-pulse amplification system [33,34]. Even though the techniques for creating helical beams with higher power are yet to be applied at high-power high-intensity laser facilities, they offer an 1…”

Electron pulse train accelerated by a linearly polarized Laguerre-Gaussian laser beam

“…There now exist multiple computational [21,22,23,24,17,25,26,27,28,29] and experimental [15,18,30,31,32] studies examining interactions of helical laser beams with plasmas. There are also some published works on the terawatt scale helical laser production using a chirped-pulse amplification system [33,34]. Even though the techniques for creating helical beams with higher power are yet to be applied at high-power high-intensity laser facilities, they offer an exciting opportunity to create laser pulses with a qualitatively different field typology that can have a profound impact on laser-plasma interactions and particle acceleration.…”