The input pulse of the laser PEARL with energy of 18 J and pulse duration of about 60 fs was compressed to 10 fs after passage through a 4-mm-thick KDP cr

The input pulse of the laser PEARL with energy of 18 J and pulse duration of about 60 fs was compressed to 10 fs after passage through a 4-mm-thick KDP crystal and reflection at two chirped mirrors with sum dispersion of -200 fs². The experiments were performed for the В-integral values from 5 to 19 without visible damage to the optical elements, which indicates that small-scale self-focusing is not a significant issue. It was shown that, by virtue of the low dispersion of the group velocity, the KDP crystal has some advantages over silica: a larger pulse compression coefficient, especially at a small value of the В-integral (B = 5, …, 9), lower absolute values of chirped mirror dispersion, and also a possibility to control the magnitude of nonlinearity and dispersion by changing crystal orientation.show less

The rapid development of high-intensity laser-generated particle and photon secondary sources has attracted widespread interest during the last 20 years n

The rapid development of high-intensity laser-generated particle and photon secondary sources has attracted widespread interest during the last 20 years not only due to fundamental science research but also because of the important applications of this developing technology. For instance, the generation of relativistic particle beams, betatron-type coherent X-ray radiation and high harmonic generation have attracted interest from various fields of science and technology owing to their diverse applications in biomedical, material science, energy, space, and security applications. In the field of biomedical applications in particular, laser-driven particle beams as well as laser-driven X-ray sources are a promising field of study. This article looks at the research being performed at the Institute of Plasma Physics and Lasers (IPPL) of the Hellenic Mediterranean University Research Centre. The recent installation of the ZEUS 45 TW laser system developed at IPPL offers unique opportunities for research in laser-driven particle and X-ray sources. This article provides information about the facility and describes initial experiments performed for establishing the baseline platforms for secondary plasma sources.show less

Transient response of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is studied in an externally-modulated analog link. Double tones represented as transmitted ra

Transient response of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is studied in an externally-modulated analog link. Double tones represented as transmitted radio frequency and dither signals are introduced. Extra modulation is generated owing to the EDFA’s transient response caused by a low-frequency dither signal. Therefore, the parasitic modulation is superposed to the output signals and may significantly affect in-band electrical spectra. Analytical and numerical solutions are both given, which agree well with experimental results. This work indicates that a suitable dither signal should be selected to maximize the carrier to intermodulation ratio. In-band spurious free dynamic range is optimized in the meantime.show less

In this paper, we present a suppression method for the thermal drift of an ultra-stable laser interferometer. The detailed analysis on the Michelson inter

In this paper, we present a suppression method for the thermal drift of an ultra-stable laser interferometer. The detailed analysis on the Michelson interferometer indicates that the change in optical path length induced by temperature variation can be effectively reduced by choosing proper thickness and/or incident angle of a compensator. Taking the optical bench of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna Pathfinder as an example, we analyze the optical bench model with a compensator and show that the temperature coefficient of this laser interferometer can be reduced down to 1 pm/K with an incident angle of 0.267828 rad. The method presented in this paper can be used in the design of ultra-stable laser interferometers, especially for space-based gravitational waves detection.show less