Contrast enhancements to petawatt lasers using short pulse optical parametric amplifiers and frequency doubling

Elsmere, Stephen; Girling, Mark; Hopps, N. W.; Hussey, D.; Parker, Stefan; Treadwell, Paul; Winter, David; Bett, Thomas H.

doi:10.1364/ao.53.006938

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Picosecond OPA: The first major improvement to the contrast of Nd:glass-based petawatt lasers was the development of self-pumped picosecond OPAs by Dorrer et al at the University of Rochester [293] . First fielded on Vulcan by Musgrave et al [294] and later at OMEGA-EP [295] , Orion [296] , NIF-ARC [297] and PHELIX [298] , these systems take the output of a mode-locked oscillator and amplify it to the microjoule level in an OPA pumped with a laser seeded by another pulse from the same oscillator. By amplifying the pulse by a factor of 10 4 , while it is weakly stretched, any parametric fluorescence is kept to within a few picoseconds of the pulse.…”

Section: Improvements In Temporal Contrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

Danson

Haefner

Bromage

et al. 2019

High Pow Laser Sci Eng

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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.

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Section: Improvements In Temporal Contrastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

Danson

Haefner

Bromage

et al. 2019

High Pow Laser Sci Eng

Self Cite

723

406

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“…higher contrast ) [11] . A further upgrade providing a high contrast front-end to Orion has also recently been commissioned, providing unimaginably high contrast levels when used in combination with the second harmonic option [12] .…”

Section: The Orion Laser/plasma Interaction Facilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

High energy density physics at the Atomic Weapons Establishment

Randewich

Danson

2014

High Pow Laser Sci Eng

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The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is tasked with supporting Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD) by certifying the performance and safety of the national deterrent in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) era. This means that recourse to further underground testing is not possible, and certification must be achieved by supplementing the historical data with the use of computer calculation. In order to facilitate this, AWE operates some of the largest supercomputers in the UK. To validate the computer codes, and indeed the designers who are using them, it is necessary to carry out further experiments in the right regimes. An excellent way to meet many of the requirements for material property data and to provide confidence in the validity of the algorithms is through experiments carried out on high power laser facilities.

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“…Moreover, pulse contrast of 10 -8 is measured by the photodiode in nanosecond with pulses 1500 J and 10 ps [13]. Furthermore, pulse contrast of 10 -10 is also measured by the photodiode in nanosecond with pulses 100J and 500fs [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Pulse contrasts of several ultrafast lasers have been improved to 10 -11 by using double chirped-pulse amplifier and cross-polarized wave [5][6][7][8], or saturable absorber [9]. In addition, pulse contrasts of frontends in Orion and PHELIX facilities achieve 10 -11 by using short pulse optical parametric amplifiers [10,11]. The ultrafast lasers are diagnosed by Sequoia (Amplitude Technology) because of their low energy and high repetition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnostics of pulse contrast for petawatt laser in SGII

et al. 2015

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Pulse contrast is an important parameter for ultrafast pulses. It shall be 10 8 or higher in order to avoid effect from noise before main pulse. Diagnostics with cross-correlation can achieve high temporal resolution such as ~7fs.Cross-correlation has advantage in pulse contrast measurement than autocorrelation because it can distinguish noise before or after main pulse. High dynamic range is also essential in pulse contrast measurement. Cross-correlation signal from a single shot is converted into a signal series through fiber array, which can be analyzed by a set of a PMT and an oscilloscope. Noise from nonlinear crystal and scatter needs decrease to improve dynamic range. And pulse power is also discussed in pulse contrast experiments. Time delay τ is generated by travel stage in measurement for repetition pulses.Then energy instability will generate error in this measurement. In measurement for single shot pulse, time delay τ is generated by slant angle of beams. The scanning procession is completed with thousands parts of beam section within a single shot, and error will generated from no uniformity in near field. Performance test of pulse contrast measurement is introduced in subsequent sections. Temporal resolution is testified by self-calibration. Dynamic range is judged by a parallel flat. At last pulse contrast of petawatt laser is diagnosed by a single shot cross-correlator with high confidence. The ratio is 10 -6 at 50ps before main pulse, and 10 -4 at 10ps before main pulse.

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Contrast enhancements to petawatt lasers using short pulse optical parametric amplifiers and frequency doubling

Cited by 14 publications

References 15 publications

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

High energy density physics at the Atomic Weapons Establishment

Diagnostics of pulse contrast for petawatt laser in SGII

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