High-contrast 2.0 Petawatt Ti:sapphire laser system

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 21; no. 24; pp. 29231 - 29239
• Main Authors: Chu, Yuxi, Liang, Xiaoyan, Yu, Lianghong, Xu, Yi, Xu, Lu, Ma, Lin, Lu, Xiaoming, Liu, Yanqi, Leng, Yuxin, Li, Ruxin, Xu, Zhizhan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 02-12-2013
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/oe.21.029231

We report on a 2.0 PW femtosecond laser system at 800 nm based on the scheme of chirped pulse amplification using Ti:sapphire crystals, which is the highest peak power ever achieved from a femtosecond laser system. Combining the index-matching cladding technique and the precise control of the time delay between the input seed pulse and pump pulses, the parasitic lasing in the final booster amplifier is effectively suppressed at the pump energy of 140 J at 527 nm. The maximum output energy from the final amplifier is 72.6 J, corresponding to a conversion efficiency of 47.2% from the pump energy to the output laser energy. The measured spectral width of the amplified output pulse from the final amplifier is 60.8 nm for the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) by controlling the spectral evolution in the amplifier chain, and the recompressed pulse duration is 26.0 fs. The technology of cross-polarized wave (XPW) is applied in a broadband front-end, and the pulse contrast is improved to ~1.5 × 10¹¹ (-100 ps before the main pulse) which is measured at 83 TW power level with a repetition rate of 5 HZ.