0.09-terawatt pulses with a 31% efficient, kilohertz repetition-rate Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier

High-energy multi-kilohertz Ho-doped regenerative amplifiers around 2 µm

We report a high-gain, cw-pumped regenerative amplifier which is based on Ho-doped crystals and seeded by a versatile broadband source emitting between 2050 and 2100 nm. The regenerative amplifier is implemented in a chirped-pulse amplification system operating at room temperature. Using Ho:YLF as gain medium, 1.1 mJ pulses with a 50 ps pulse duration and a 10 kHz repetition rate are generated at 2050 and 2060 nm, corresponding to an average power of 11 W. Using the same seed source, a 10 kHz Ho:YAG regenerative amplifier at 2090 nm is studied in the same configuration. In all cases the regenerative amplifier parameters are chosen to operate in a tunable single-energy regime without instabilities.

10 kHz 40 W Ti:sapphire regenerative ring amplifier

A cryogenically cooled Ti:sapphire regenerative ring amplifier was developed as a laser for generating a laser-produced plasma light source. With a 10 kHz 180 W pump laser, the amplifier output is 40 W before compression and 26 W after compression. We believe it to be the current highest average-power output from a single stage Ti:sapphire amplifier. The effective focal length of the thermal lens is measured to be 2.2 m at 100 K for 180 W of pump power. With a 1 m focal length lens placed in the resonator, the effect of a thermal lens on the resonator mode is suppressed. High conversion efficiency is achieved for the whole pumping power range without any additional measures for thermal compensation.

30-mJ, diode-pumped, chirped-pulse Yb:YLF regenerative amplifier

A diode-pumped chirped-pulse regenerative amplifier with a cooled Yb:YLF crystal has been developed. The output pulse energy is 30 mJ at 20-Hz repetition rate. A high effective extraction efficiency of 68% is obtained, which is attributed to reduced saturation fluence at low temperature and to a high effective pulse energy fluence during regenerative amplification. After pulse compression by use of a parallel grating pair, 18-mJ pulse energy and 795-fs pulse duration are obtained.

TEM00 terawatt amplification by use of micro-optic spatial mode conversion

Micro-optic technology is used in a terawatt multipass Ti:sapphire amplifier to convert high-multimode, 532-nm radiation from an unstable resonator Nd:YAG laser into a TEM00 amplified output without sacrificing the amplifier-to-pump energy conversion efficiency. Experimental measurements and Fourier analysis of the spatial mode show a 3.8-fold increase in the peak irradiance and an order-of-magnitude improvement in the spatial contrast.

Sub-20-fs terawatt-class laser system with a mirrorless regenerative amplifier and an adaptive phase controller

We have developed an ultrabroadband regenerative amplifier with a mirrorless cavity to eliminate the limitation of bandwidth of dielectric coats on cavity mirrors. The large amount of material dispersion in the Pellin-Broca prisms that are used instead of cavity mirrors is compensated for with a hybrid technique that uses Brewster prism pairs in the regenerative amplifier and an adaptive phase controller of a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator. We obtained a 16-fs pulse width with an energy of 13 mJ, which is to our knowledge the highest energy obtained in the sub-20-fs regime by use of an adaptive phase controller.

High-average-power 2-kHz laser for generation of ultrashort x-ray pulses

We describe a Ti:sapphire-based laser-x-ray system specifically designed for generation of ultrafast x-ray pulses in the tenths-of-nanometers spectral range at a 2-kHz repetition rate. To obtain high-contrast laser pulses we divide the laser system into a section for generation of microjoule, high-contrast pulses with pulse cleaning and a subsequent section for chirped-pulse amplification and pulse compression. This laser section operates in conjunction with an x-ray-generation section based on a moving copper wire in a He atmosphere. The high reliability of the entire system permits maintenance-free production of x-ray pulses over tens of hours. Average x-ray fluxes of 10(13) photons/(s 4pi sr 1 keV) at 3 keV and 10(9) photons/(s 4pi sr) above 5 keV of photon energy are produced.