We report on a two-arm hybrid high-power laser system (HPLS) able to deliver 2 × 10 PW femtosecond pulses, developed at the Bucharest-Magurele Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) Facility. A hybrid front-end (FE) based on a Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplifier and a picosecond optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on beta barium borate (BBO) crystals, with a cross-polarized wave (XPW) filter in between, has been developed. It delivers 10 mJ laser pulses, at 10 Hz repetition rate, with more than 70 nm spectral bandwidth and high-intensity contrast, in the range of 1013:1. The high-energy Ti:sapphire amplifier stages of both arms were seeded from this common FE. The final high-energy amplifier, equipped with a 200 mm diameter Ti:sapphire crystal, has been pumped by six 100 J nanosecond frequency doubled Nd:glass lasers, at 1 pulse/min repetition rate. More than 300 J output pulse energy has been obtained by pumping with only 80% of the whole 600 J available pump energy. The compressor has a transmission efficiency of 74% and an output pulse duration of 22.7 fs was measured, thus demonstrating that the dual-arm HPLS has the capacity to generate 10 PW peak power femtosecond pulses. The reported results represent the cornerstone of the ELI-NP 2 × 10 PW femtosecond laser facility, devoted to fundamental and applied nuclear physics research.

We report on the generation and delivery of 10.2 PW peak power laser pulses, using the High Power Laser System at the Extreme Laser Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics facility. In this work we demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the compression and propagation of full energy, full aperture, laser pulses that reach a power level of more than 10 PW.

Transverse parasitic lasing is well known for limiting the signal gain and the pulse energy that can be extracted from Ti:sapphire petawatt amplifiers. We have developed a technique for suppressing these parasitic lasing modes based on perfect refractive index-matching liquid doped with a broad-bandwidth absorber to suppress the transverse lasing while ensuring proper heat removal from the Ti:sapphire crystal. The 800 nm laser output with a bandwidth of 41 nm (FWHM) and peak energy of 22.7 J at a repetition rate of 1 Hz is demonstrated.

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