Analysis of passively combined divided-pulse amplification as an energy-scaling concept

Kienel, Marco; Klenke, Arno; Eidam, Tino; Baumgartl, Martin; Jáuregui, César; Limpert, Jens; Tünnermann, Andreas

doi:10.1364/oe.21.029031

Cited by 41 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…[25][26][27] Here, each pulse is split in time into a train of pulses via birefringent crystals or via a combination of beam splitters and free-space delay lines. Subsequently, the individual lower-intensity pulses are amplified and, finally, coherently temporally combined.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, increasing the number of pulse replicas to 100 or even 1000 with traditional DPA approaches in the CPA regime and, thus, achieving TW-peak powers with fibre amplifiers will become extremely challenging due to the required number and length of the delay lines, their individual stabilisation and the necessary mitigation of saturation effects in the amplifier. 26 Hence, an interesting alternative to DPA is to start with a higher repetition rate and to use only one delay line for stacking hundreds or even thousands of pulses. Such a delay line can be realized in the form of a passive enhancement cavity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A concept for multiterawatt fibre lasers based on coherent pulse stacking in passive cavities

et al. 2014

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Since the advent of femtosecond lasers, performance improvements have constantly impacted on existing applications and enabled novel applications. However, one performance feature bearing the potential of a quantum leap for high-field applications is still not available: the simultaneous emission of extremely high peak and average powers. Emerging applications such as laser particle acceleration require exactly this performance regime and, therefore, challenge laser technology at large. On the one hand, canonical bulk systems can provide pulse peak powers in the multi-terawatt to petawatt range, while on the other hand, advanced solid-state-laser concepts such as the thin disk, slab or fibre are well known for their high efficiency and their ability to emit high average powers in the kilowatt range with excellent beam quality. In this contribution, a compact laser system capable of simultaneously providing high peak and average powers with high wall-plug efficiency is proposed and analysed. The concept is based on the temporal coherent combination (pulse stacking) of a pulse train emitted from a high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser system in a passive enhancement cavity. Thus, the pulse energy is increased at the cost of the repetition rate while almost preserving the average power. The concept relies on a fast switching element for dumping the enhanced pulse out of the cavity. The switch constitutes the key challenge of our proposal. Addressing this challenge could, for the first time, allow the highly efficient dumping of joule-class pulses at megawatt average power levels and lead to unprecedented laser parameters.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A concept for multiterawatt fibre lasers based on coherent pulse stacking in passive cavities

et al. 2014

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“…Hereby, the first pulse replica extracts a remarkable amount of inversion from the fiber leading to a reduced available inversion for the subsequent pulse replicas. As a result, the shape of the initially divided pulse train with homogeneous energy distribution changes to an exponentially decaying shape, which cannot be efficiently recombined due to the pulse-to-pulse difference in amplitude and, which is even more severe, the difference in acquired nonlinear phase due to self-phase modulation [18]. Such passive DPA (or any CBC) setups have high symmetry requirements.…”

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confidence: 99%

Energy scaling of femtosecond amplifiers using actively controlled divided-pulse amplification

et al. 2014

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Divided-pulse amplification is a promising method for the energy scaling of femtosecond laser amplifiers, where pulses are temporally split prior to amplification and coherently recombined afterwards. We present a method that uses an actively stabilized setup with separated stages for splitting and combining. The additional degrees of freedom can be employed to mitigate the limitations originating from saturation of the amplifier that cannot be compensated in passive double-pass configurations using just one common stage for pulse splitting and combining. In a first proof-of-principle experiment, actively controlled divided pulses are applied in a fiber chirped-pulse amplification system resulting in combined and compressed pulses with an energy of 1.25 mJ and a peak power of 2.9 GW.

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“…Even longer pulse bursts can be combined (eight pulses, sixteen pulses ...), because the combination of AOM and EOMs allows addressing amplitude and phase of each single pulse in the system. At potential high energy operation, effort has to be put into amplitude shaping of the pulse burst, as the gain decreases in the amplifiers for later pulses in the burst will no longer be negligible 13 . In conclusion, the system as presented is still far from its full potential.…”

Section: Challenges and Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electro-optically controlled divided-pulse amplification

et al. 2016

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We present a spatial and temporal coherent-beam-combination system based on a fiber-integrated front-end, electrooptical components, and optical delay lines. The system features a larger scaling potential, enhanced stability and reduced alignment sensitivity compared to known divided-pulse amplification schemes. In a proof-of-principle experiment combining 4 pulses, a combining efficiency larger than 95% and a high amplitude stability are demonstrated. The efficiency is largely independent of the combined pulse energy and the temporal pulse contrast is better than 20 dB.

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Analysis of passively combined divided-pulse amplification as an energy-scaling concept

Cited by 41 publications

References 13 publications

A concept for multiterawatt fibre lasers based on coherent pulse stacking in passive cavities

A concept for multiterawatt fibre lasers based on coherent pulse stacking in passive cavities

Energy scaling of femtosecond amplifiers using actively controlled divided-pulse amplification

Electro-optically controlled divided-pulse amplification

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