Temporal contrast in Ti:sapphire lasers, characterization and control

Nantel, M.; Itatani, Jiro; Tien, An-Chun; Faure, Jérôme; Kaplan, D.; Bauvier, M.; Buma, Takashi; Rompay, P. Van; Nee, J. S.; Pronko, P. P.; Umstadter, Donald; Mourou, G.

doi:10.1109/2944.686755

Cited by 80 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Some techniques for improving temporal contrast, such as femtosecond preamplification 2 and the use of a saturable absorber 2,3 have been proposed. Also, it has been demonstrated that an efficient way to clean the pulse after preamplification is to set up a nonlin-ear filter, as was first illustrated by a nonlinear elliptical polarization rotation 4,5 (NER) in hollow waveguides filled with xenon, with a limited input energy of 100 J.…”

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confidence: 99%

10^?10 temporal contrast for femtosecond ultraintense lasers by cross-polarized wave generation

et al. 2005

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We take advantage of nonlinear properties associated with chi(3) tensor elements in BaF2 cubic crystal to improve the temporal contrast of femtosecond laser pulses. The technique presented is based on cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation. We have obtained a transmission efficiency of 10% and 10(-10) contrast with an input pulse in the millijoule range. This filter does not affect the spectral shape or the phase of the cleaned pulse. It also acts as an efficient spatial filter. In this method the contrast enhancement is limited only by the extinction ratio of the polarization discrimination device.

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confidence: 99%

10^?10 temporal contrast for femtosecond ultraintense lasers by cross-polarized wave generation

et al. 2005

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“…Saturable absorber has been proposed and demonstrated [31,40,[62][63][64][65][66][67] to be an effective means to improve the temporal contrast with a rise time much faster than Pockels cells. To take advantage of this method, the laser pulse must have a fast rise time; therefore, it is best to employ saturable absorber before the pulse stretcher.…”

Section: Temporal Specifications Of the 110-tw And The 13-tw Beamlinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A 110-TW multiple-beam laser system with a 5-TW wavelength-tunable auxiliary beam for versatile control of laser-plasma interaction

et al. 2014

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A Ti:sapphire laser system has been constructed with two synchronized main beams of 110 TW and 13 TW, and a 5-TW wavelength-tunable synchronized auxiliary beam for versatile control of laser-plasma interaction. The first main beam provides 3.3-J, 30-fs, 810-nm pulses, and the second 450-mJ, 34-fs, 805-nm pulses. The auxiliary beam comes from amplified spectral windows selected from a supercontinuum of high spatial coherence and provides 38-fs pulses with tunable wavelengths (870-920 nm). The two main beams can be focused down to M 2 = 1.2 and 1.1, with 77 and 81 % energy enclosed in the focal spots, respectively. The energy fluctuations are 1.1 and 1.8 %, and the pointing fluctuations are 4.5 and 4.8 lrad, respectively. By using a preamplifier and saturable absorber before the pulse stretcher to suppress amplified spontaneous emission, the temporal contrast of the 110-TW main beam reaches 4 Â 10 À10 at the -100-ps timescale. Even though the auxiliary beam is generated from a highly nonlinear process, by confining the supercontinuum generation in a single self-trapping filament, a spatial coherence close to the main beams can be achieved. It can be focused down to M 2 = 1.3, with 72 % energy enclosed in the focal spot. The energy fluctuation is 2.6 %, and the pointing fluctuation is 4.7 lrad. The versatility of synchronized multiple-beams with tunable wavelengths, good energy and pointing stability, and the spatiotemporal quality of the laser system has been essential to our experiments in high-harmonic generation, extreme-UV lasers, and laser-wakefield accelerators in which precision control of laser-plasma interaction is facilitated by a concerted sequence of driving pulses.

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“…This pulse pedestal includes low intensity background energy over a nanosecond time scale from a number of sources within the CPA femtosecond laser system including amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), pre and post pulses, spectral wings from grating mismatch, and other sources described in the literature. Furthermore it has been shown that the presence of this pedestal can influence ultrashort experimentation [7][8][9][10] and merits additional study [11,12]. Efforts to reduce the pedestal have been shown to improve the quality of the beam and experimental results [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%