title: Transmission grating stretcher for contrast enhancement of high power lasers.
abstract: We propose, for the first time, a transmission grating stretcher for high power lasers and demonstrate its superiority over conventional, reflective gold grating stretchers in terms of pulse temporal quality. We show that, compared to a conventional stretcher with the same stretching factor, the transmission-grating based stretcher yields more than an order of magnitude improvement in the contrast pedestal. We have also quantitatively characterized the roughness of the grating surfaces and estimated its impact on the contrast pedestal.
authors.forename: Yunxin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hooker
authors.forename: Oleg
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Chekhlov
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hawkes
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Collier
authors.forename: P P
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Rajeev
mesh_terms: D006046:Gold; D007834:Lasers; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013057:Spectrum Analysis; D013499:Surface Properties; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D006046:Gold