Abstract
Keywords
1 Introduction
The continued advancement of compact, short pulse lasers with high average power is crucial for the development of important applications. These include driving the next generation of ultra-intense few-cycle and single-cycle sources at wavelengths ranging from the visible to the far infrared through optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA)[
Figure
In this paper, we describe a chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser that produces 1 J pulses of picosecond duration at 0.5 kHz repetition rate with good long-term stability. We discuss new results of the characterization of this laser, including at-wavelength interferometry of the active region under thermal load, and we report initial results of operation of a 1 J amplifier operating at 1 kHz repetition rate, corresponding to 1 kW average power.
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Our approach to generating high energy, picosecond duration pulses at high repetition rates relies on cryogenically cooled Yb:YAG active mirrors[
The active mirror, thick disk geometry employed in our amplifiers develops mostly longitudinal thermal gradients which do not contribute to thermal lensing as strongly as the predominately radial gradients encountered in cylindrically cooled gain geometries. Its still comparatively small thickness, which minimizes the distance between heat generation and the cooling surface, limits the maximum temperature difference within the gain region while its moderate diameter to length ratio has the advantage of limiting the transverse gain, which diminishes amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) depletion of the amplifier storage energy[
2 Laser description and results
2.1 Laser frontend
A block diagram showing the layout of the 500 Hz repetition rate, 1 J, picosecond laser system is shown in Figure
2.2 100-mJ-level amplifier
The layout of the 100-mJ-level amplifier is shown in Figure
2.3 High repetition rate, 1 J amplifier
The Joule-level amplifier is shown in Figure
3 High repetition rate, 1.5 J performance
The performance characteristics of this amplifier operating at 500 Hz repetition rate are shown in Figure
4 Interferometry of high energy active mirror amplifier
To further characterize these amplifiers at the pumping conditions corresponding to kilowatt average power operation and for evaluating their potential for future power scaling, we have made at-wavelength interferometric measurements of the gain medium deformation under full thermal load. Figure
The thermal lens power obtained from these wavefronts is plotted in Figure
5 Initial demonstration of 1 J, 1 kHz repetition rate operation
In progress toward scaling this amplifier to higher repetition rates and average powers, we have made an initial demonstration of laser operation at 1 J and 1 kHz repetition rate (1 kW average power). This first test at the kilowatt average power level was conducted by seeding the high power amplifier with the 67 mJ pulses from the 1 kHz amplifier described above, and pumping the amplifier with the same pump pulses as before, but at an increased repetition rate of 1 kHz. The geometry of the joule-level, multi-pass amplifier remained the same. The results of this demonstration are shown in Figure
6 Summary
In summary, we have developed a CPA laser based on cryogenically cooled Yb:YAG active mirror amplifiers that produces 1 J, picosecond duration pulses at 500 Hz repetition rate with a measured RMS pulse to pulse energy variation of 0.75% over 30 min of operation. The amplifiers are modular and scalable. Interferometric measurements of the thermal lens show that this approach is suitable for the generation of beams of joule-level energy ultrashort laser pulses with kilowatt average power. We have made an initial demonstration of operation at 1 kW average power (1 J pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate).
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