High-contrast, high-intensity laser pulse generation using a nonlinear preamplifier in a Ti:sapphire laser system.
We report a high-contrast, high-intensity Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system that incorporates a nonlinear preamplifier based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA). By cooling the Ti:sapphire crystal in the final amplifier down to 77 K, the chirped-pulses are amplified to 2.9 J at a 10 Hz repetition rate without a thermal lensing effect. Pulse compression down to 19 fs duration obtained after amplification indicates a peak power of 80 TW. With the OPCPA, the temporal contrast is significantly improved to better than 7x10(-9) in a few picoseconds interval prior to the main laser pulse.
Kiriyama
Hiromitsu
H
Advanced Photon Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Kizugawa-city, Kyoto, Japan. kiriyama.hiromitsu@jaea.go.jp
Mori
Michiaki
M
Nakai
Yoshiki
Y
Shimomura
Takuya
T
Tanoue
Manabu
M
Akutsu
Atushi
A
Kondo
Shuji
S
Kanazawa
Shuhei
S
Okada
Hajime
H
Motomura
Tomohiro
T
Daido
Hiroyuki
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Kimura
Toyoaki
T
Tajima
Toshiki
T