400 TW operation of Orion at ultra-high contrast

723

406

In the 2015 review paper ‘Petawatt Class Lasers Worldwide’ a comprehensive overview of the current status of high-power facilities of ${>}200~\text{TW}$ was presented. This was largely based on facility specifications, with some description of their uses, for instance in fundamental ultra-high-intensity interactions, secondary source generation, and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). With the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Professors Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou for the development of the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), which made these lasers possible, we celebrate by providing a comprehensive update of the current status of ultra-high-power lasers and demonstrate how the technology has developed. We are now in the era of multi-petawatt facilities coming online, with 100 PW lasers being proposed and even under construction. In addition to this there is a pull towards development of industrial and multi-disciplinary applications, which demands much higher repetition rates, delivering high-average powers with higher efficiencies and the use of alternative wavelengths: mid-IR facilities. So apart from a comprehensive update of the current global status, we want to look at what technologies are to be deployed to get to these new regimes, and some of the critical issues facing their development.

Section: United Kingdommentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Geographic Overview Of Facilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

Danson

Haefner

Bromage

et al. 2019

723

406

“…This is achieved in an auxiliary chamber separate from the compressor chambers (see Figure 2). However, an awkward feature of both the original installation [1,3] and the present installation, enhanced in aperture by segmentation with two beamlets 300 mm square in a vertical array [4] , is the fact that the frequency doubling crystals are on the verge of being over-driven [9] . Increased input intensity would lead to de-conversion and loss of efficiency.…”

Section: Conceptual Design: Operation At 2ωmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To obtain increased temporal contrast, one of the latter beamlines may be frequency doubled. With the original capability [3] enhanced recently, up to 210 J in 500 fs is available at 527 nm [4] . For a programme of experiments at high energy density, laser pulses are delivered to a small target, positioned and synchronized to high accuracy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A route to enhanced performance for the petawatt beamlines of the Orion laser facility

Harvey

2022

The Orion laser facility at AWE provides multiple beams to target delivering synchronized pulses at both nanosecond and sub-picosecond duration. In the latter, the peak power approaches the petawatt level. This paper presents a conceptual design for potential development of these beamlines. This would deliver a significant enhancement of performance at the fundamental level. In addition, a new approach is described for the management of frequency conversion at high intensity, which may allow significantly enhanced performance at the second harmonic also.

“…This allowed Orion to generate~200 TW pulses with a contrast of~10 18 [329] , the highest contrast demonstrated on any facility worldwide. An upgrade to the frequency-doubled system has since been implemented, with larger-aperture crystals and a double-aperture geometry to deliver~400 TW [330] .…”

Section: The Orion Laser Facilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A history of high-power laser research and development in the United Kingdom

Danson

White

Barr

et al. 2021

Self Cite

The first demonstration of laser action in ruby was made in 1960 by T. H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Many laboratories worldwide began the search for lasers using different materials, operating at different wavelengths. In the UK, academia, industry and the central laboratories took up the challenge from the earliest days to develop these systems for a broad range of applications. This historical review looks at the contribution the UK has made to the advancement of the technology, the development of systems and components and their exploitation over the last 60 years.