petawatt-scale source of IR light
LAP future few-cycle high field facility PFS will deliver petawatt-class pulses with 5-fs duration and carrier-envelope phase control. It employs a novel short-pulse OPCPA scheme for nearly octave-spanning pulse amplification, which also has the added benefit of inherently perfect contrast outside a time window of 1 ps around the laser pulse. For its operation we are designing and constructing a novel diode-pumped CPA pump laser system, aiming at 4x10J pulses with 1-ps duration. This system has delivered its first compressed pulses at the 100-mJ level and two more amplifiers for the joule range are being tested. The front-end system, providing two optically synchronized seed pulses fort he pump laser and the OPCPA chain has also been completed recently. The full system is expected to be commissioned in 2010.
contact: S. Karsch
, Zs. Major, S. Trushin
contact: S. Karsch
, Zs. Major, S. TrushinReferences:
High-energy diode-pumped nanosecond Yb:YAG MOPA system, M. Siebold et al., Opt. Express 16, 3674 (2008)
Short pulse optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification for the generation of high-power few-cycle pulses, J. A. Fülöp et al. New J. Phys. 9, 438 (2007)
Fig. 1. PFS will deliver petawatt-class pulses with 5-fs duration and carrier-envelope phase control. It employs a novel short-pulse OPCPA scheme for nearly octave-spanning pulse amplification. (© thn)