Double chirped-pulse-amplification laser: a way to clean pulses temporally

Kalashnikov, M. P.; Risse, E.; Schönnagel, H.; Sandner, W.

doi:10.1364/ol.30.000923

Cited by 160 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…CEP-stable 1.5-µm pulses from the front-end [10] are temporally stretched to ∼40 ps using a grating-based stretcher [40] employing 500 grooves/mm 96% efficient gold reflection gratings. In addition, an IR highresolution acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (DAZZLER) [41] is used for higher-order dispersion control.…”

Section: Cep-stable Multimillijoule Infrared Opcpamentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient 4-fold self-compression of millijoule pulses from a 1.5-µm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier

Ališauskas¹,

Smilgevičius²,

Piskarskas³

et al. 2010

Lithuanian J. Phys.

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We discuss a four-stage optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier that delivers carrier-envelope phase-stable ∼1.5 µm pulses with energies up to 12.5 mJ before recompression. The system (previously reported in Opt. Lett. 34, 2498Lett. 34, (2009) is based on a fusion of femtosecond diode-pumped solid-state Yb technology and a picosecond 100-mJ Nd:YAG pump amplifier. Pulses with 62 nm bandwidth are recompressed to a 74.4 fs duration, which is close to the transform limit. Here, to show the way towards a TW-peak-power single-cycle IR source, we perform detailed investigations of single-filament IR supercontinuum generation via femtosecond filamentation in noble gases. Depending on the experimental conditions, two filamentation regimes can be achieved: (i) in the filamentation regime without plasma-induced pulse self-compression, we generate 4-mJ 600-nm-wide IR supercontinua of high spatial quality supporting 8-fs pulse durations, which corresponds to less than two optical cycles at 1.5 µm; (ii) in the self-compression regime, we demonstrate self-compression of 2.2 mJ pulses down to 19.8 fs duration in a single filament in argon with a 1.5 mJ output energy and 66% energy throughput. By adapting the experimental conditions, further energy upscaling of the self-compressed pulses seems feasible.

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Section: Cep-stable Multimillijoule Infrared Opcpamentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient 4-fold self-compression of millijoule pulses from a 1.5-µm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier

Ališauskas¹,

Smilgevičius²,

Piskarskas³

et al. 2010

Lithuanian J. Phys.

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“…The European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) has designed a 25 PW, 10 25 W cm −2 single laser beamline (ILE) [2] , in which the high temporal contrast required by pre-plasma-free interactions [3] will be one of the major challenges. Various factors resulting in temporal contrast degradation have been analyzed and verified, such as gain saturation [4] , asymmetric spectral clipping [5] , self-phase modulation [6] , amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) in the CPA system [7] and pump distortion-induced noise (PDN) [8] , surface-reflection-initiated pre-pulses [9] and parametric fluorescence (PF) [10] in the OPCPA system, etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Output temporal contrast simulation of a large aperture high power short pulse laser system

Zhu

Xie

Ouyang

et al. 2014

High Pow Laser Sci Eng

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The work presented in this paper is a study of output temporal contrast degradation by near-field quality deterioration, such as intensity modulation and wavefront deviation, in a large aperture high power short pulse laser system. A twostep focusing algorithm with a coordinate transform based on the Fresnel approximation in the space domain is used for simulating the output focused by an off-axis parabolic mirror. The temporal contrast degradation by intensity modulation and wavefront deviation is analyzed and the influence of the diameter on the temporal contrast degradation is revealed. The simulation and assumption results based on the parameters of the Shen Guang-II laser system are compared with the online experimental temporal contrast data. The near-field quality deterioration might lead to temporal contrast degradation, hindering higher temporal contrast in large aperture high power short pulse laser systems.

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“…In addition, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from regenerative amplifiers can form a long pedestal around the main pulse, contributing to the degradation of the temporal contrast. Therefore, the development of laser technologies enabling ever growing intensities has been accompanied by the development of many techniques [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] for enhancing the temporal contrast.Short pulse, low gain optical parametric amplification (OPA) is one of the most efficient contrast enhancement techniques that can work at the front end of a high power laser system. Pumping an OPA with a sufficiently short pump pulse, typically shorter than 1 ps, ensures that the pump overlaps only with the main signal pulse, leaving discrete pre-pulses and the majority of the ASE pedestal outside the amplification window.…”

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Generation of high contrast and high spatial quality idler from a low-gain optical parametric amplifier

et al. 2016

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The temporal contrast of a regeneratively amplified, sub-picosecond pulse is enhanced employing a lowgain optical parametric amplification stage self-pumped by the second-harmonic of the pulse. Through careful characterization of the two related non-linear processes and optimization of the non-collinear geometry, a robust high-contrast idler pulse has been generated, with excellent spatial quality in both the near and far field. The overall energy conversion efficiency exceeds 14%, with 33% intensity conversion efficiency. The temporal cleaning is implemented without any bandwidth losses or spectral shift and produces approximately 20% temporal shortening. These experimental findings are in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. Exciting and rapidly developing investigations of lasermatter interactions at relativistic laser intensities have been enabled by the development of chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) techniques [1]. For these kind of interactions the temporal contrast of the laser pulse is one of the key parameters, since prepulses and pedestals can damage or deform the target before the arrival of the main pulse [2,3]. A suitably high contrast for some applications cannot be achieved from a regenerative pre-amplifier because even a very small pre-pulse can be amplified to a level sufficient to pre-ionize the target. In addition, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from regenerative amplifiers can form a long pedestal around the main pulse, contributing to the degradation of the temporal contrast. Therefore, the development of laser technologies enabling ever growing intensities has been accompanied by the development of many techniques [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] for enhancing the temporal contrast.Short pulse, low gain optical parametric amplification (OPA) is one of the most efficient contrast enhancement techniques that can work at the front end of a high power laser system. Pumping an OPA with a sufficiently short pump pulse, typically shorter than 1 ps, ensures that the pump overlaps only with the main signal pulse, leaving discrete pre-pulses and the majority of the ASE pedestal outside the amplification window. This leads to enhancement of the temporal contrast of the signal by a factor equivalent to the gain factor [12]. Generating the pump pulse of the OPA by frequency doubling a part of the input pulse and using the idler rather than the signal can provide an extreme contrast enhancement that can reach up to the third power of the input contrast [9]. This theoretical prediction is limited only by parametric noise and scattered photons from the signal overlapping with the idler.In its simplest configuration, as previously described by R. Shah, et al. [10], the contrast enhancement system consists of a second harmonic generation (SHG) and a non-collinear OPA stage. The input pulse is split into two parts and the doubling stage converts a large part of the pulse energy into a second harmonic (SH) pulse to pump the following OPA stage, which is seeded by the rest of the input pul...

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Double chirped-pulse-amplification laser: a way to clean pulses temporally

Cited by 160 publications

References 10 publications

Efficient 4-fold self-compression of millijoule pulses from a 1.5-µm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier

Efficient 4-fold self-compression of millijoule pulses from a 1.5-µm optical parametric chirped-pulse amplifier

Output temporal contrast simulation of a large aperture high power short pulse laser system

Generation of high contrast and high spatial quality idler from a low-gain optical parametric amplifier

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