Hundred-Joule-level, nanosecond-pulse Nd:glass laser system with high spatiotemporal beam quality

Abstract

A 100-J-level Nd:glass laser system in nanosecond-scale pulse width has been constructed to perform as a standard source of high-fluence-laser science experiments. The laser system, operating with typical pulse durations of 3-5 ns and beam diameter 60 mm, employs a sequence of successive rod amplifiers to achieve 100-J-level energy at 1053 nm at 3 ns. The frequency conversion can provide energy of 50-J level at 351 nm. In addition to the high stability of the energy output, the most valuable of the laser system is the high spatiotemporal beam quality of the output, which contains the uniform square pulse waveform, the uniform flat-top spatial fluence distribution and the uniform flat-top wavefront.

Wavefront Shaping by a Small-Aperture Deformable Mirror in the Front Stage for High-Power Laser Systems

“…The beam shaper mainly compensates the spatial intensity of the output laser to achieve a high-quality nearfield. A four-stage Nd/glass rod amplifier is applied in the laser system with an output energy of 100 J and a beam diameter of D = 60 mm at the end [42,43]. In the complex laser system with a low operating repetition rate of approximately 2 shots per hour, an electricity-controlled DM is used for adaptive wavefront shaping.…”

“…In the laser system, the pulse seeds generated from the all-fiber structure front end with 10 nJ/3 ns at the wavelength of 1053 nm [41] passes through the preamplifier providing a high gain of 10 5 times, and its output energy reaches a 200 µJ level after the beam shaper. The beam shaper mainly compensates the spatial intensity of the output laser to achieve a high-quality nearfield.…”

Analysis of the beam-pointing stability in the high power laser system

“…The hundred-joule-level laser system has recently been constructed to supply a standard light source for high-energydensity scientific experiments at National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Tunable Laser, Harbin [17][18][19]. This laser system is ideally suited for a wide variety of high-energy-density scientific experiments, including laser-induced damage mechanism for UV optics research [20][21][22], stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) [23][24][25][26][27] and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) [28,29].…”

Development of Single-Longitudinal-Mode Selection Technology for Solid-State Lasers

“…Alternatively, SLM selection methods can be applied to solid state lasers to generate SLM lasers [6,7]. Owing to their strong power (average and peak) scaling ability and wide range of wavelength coverage, solid-state lasers play an important role in space exploration, defense, and manufacturing [8][9][10]. In the past few decades, there has been a rise in interest towards the SLM selection of solidstate lasers, which also promotes the development of optical components, cavity structures, and active controllers.…”