SYLOS lasers – the frontier of few-cycle, multi-TW, kHz lasers for ultrafast applications at extreme light infrastructure attosecond light pulse source

Abstract

The extreme light infrastructure attosecond light pulse source offers beamtime for users of various attosecond and particle sources driven by versatile laser systems. Here we report on the state of the art of a few-cycle, multi-TW, 1kHz repetition rate laser system, now fully operational in the facility. The system is based on four stages of optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) pumped by a total of 320mJ, 80ps frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser pulses. All OPA stages utilize double crystal configuration, which design has been also confirmed by model calculations. The 1kHz SYLOS 2 system produces 32mJ laser pulses around a central wavelength of 891nm with 6.6fs (<2.3 optical cycles) pulse duration exceeding the peak power of 4.8 TW on a daily basis. The recorded best pulse duration is 6.3fs, which corresponds to 2.12 cycles and 5.1 TW peak power. During long-term (24h) performance tests, energy stability of 1.2%, carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stability of 210mrad, and pointing stability of 0.4µrad were demonstrated, while the Strehl ratio of the beam is kept above 0.75. In order to help the alignment of all the different experiments at the facility and to reduce the workload on SYLOS 2 system, a second laser system has been developed. The so-called SYLOS Experimental Alignment (SEA) laser mimicks the performance of the SYLOS 2 laser, but at a repetition rate two orders of magnitude lower and without CEP-stabilization. The three single-crystal OPA stages of the SEA laser provide 42mJ pulse energy for the users, while having energy stability of 0.87% and sub-13fs pulse duration at a repetition rate ranging from a single shot up to 10Hz.

Generation of single attosecond relativistic electron bunch from intense laser interaction with a nanosphere

“…However, several other lasers are good candidates for the demonstration of the scheme or at least for the preliminary experiments. They are providing among others a 10 Hz repetition rate, 75 mJ energy and 4.7 fs duration laser pulses [43], 42 mJ with less than 7 fs and a peak intensity of 6.9 × 10 19 W cm −2 [44], or at 1 kHz repetition rate 5 mJ, 3.4 fs laser pulses with an estimated vacuum laser intensity of ≈ 5 × 10 18 W cm −2 [45], 32 mJ with less than 7 fs [46].…”

Lézeres neutronforrás fejlesztése • Development of a Laser-based Neutron Source

“…Azaz, a rövid impulzushossz mellett a másodpercenkénti impulzusszám is egy igen lényeges gyakorlati paraméter. Mindkét feltételnek az ELI-ALPS 1 kHz ismétlési frekvenciájú SY-LOS-lézere tesz eleget, melynek jelenleg nemzetközi szinten is unikális a helyzete (Toth et al, 2020).…”

High-Flux 100 kHz Attosecond Pulse Source Driven by a High-Average Power Annular Laser Beam

“…We make this distinction because temporal characterization is a demonstration of the attosecond pump-probe capability. As shown in Figure 1, single-pass HHG can provide high harmonics [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] up to tens of nJ per shot at 1 MHz by using powerful driving lasers with an average power up to ~100 W [37][38][39][40][41][42][43] and the attosecond pulses [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] up to hundreds of pJ per shot at 100 kHz. Intracavity HHG can deliver the high harmonics with the repetition rates up to hundreds of MHz [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63].…”