Spatial-spectral interference carries the spectral phase difference information between short pulses. We propose a new method of time delay retrieval via the slope of spatial-spectral interference fringe in the case of only time delay without high-order spectral phase difference between short pulses. The analytical expression is deduced based on the principle of spatial-spectral interference. The simulation results show that the slope of spatial-spectral interference fringe and the crossing angle between short pulses are both important for the calculation accuracy. This proposed method has advantages of no direction-of-time ambiguity, simple principle and calculation process, which are helpful for the measurement and control of the time delay between short pulses in coherent combination, plasma parameter diagnosis and so on.
The paper presents the technical design and progress on a special high-power laser facility, i.e. XG-III, which is being used for high-field physics research and fast ignition research. The laser facility outputs synchronized nanosecond, picosecond and femtosecond beams with three wavelengths, i.e. 527 nm, 1053 nm and 800 nm respectively, and multiple combinations of the beams can be used for physics experiments. The commissioning of the laser facility was completed by the end of 2013. The measurement results show that the main parameters of the three beams are equal to or greater than the designed ones.
XG-III laser facility is a petawatt laser which has a unique feature of three synchronized pulses output for various pump-probe experiments. To realize the synchronization with zero timing jitter, we have designed and implemented a novel front-end system based on super-continuum injected femtosecond optical parametric amplification (fs:OPA). Critical parameters of fs:OPA were optimized for the best conversion efficiency. Experimental results verified that major design specifications such as pulse energy, central wavelength and spectral width were fully accomplished and a high pulse contrast ratio was also achieved by the fs:OPA process.
The paper presents the development of a sub-petawatt ultrashort laser facility, i.e. the upgraded super intense laser for
experiment on the extremes (SILEX-I). The facility is a multi-stage Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser
system. Cross-polarized wave generation was used to improve the temporal contrast. An adaptive optical system was
utilized to correct wavefront aberrations and to improve focusability before each shot. After upgrading, the maximum
energy is 20.1 J, the recompressed pulse width is 26.8 fs and the peak power is up to 750 TW. The temporal contrast is
around 109. The on-target focal spot size (full width at half maximum (FWHM)) is Φ6.5 μm and the focused intensity is
greater than 4x1020 W/cm2.
The stability of phased-array optics is a crucial issue for far-field focal-spot quality. The tiled approach of phasing optical elements is a widely used technique. Here it is adopted to maintain the long-time stability of a tiled system by a proportional-integral-differential (PID) algorithm. Experimental data is taken with 2×1 tiled-flat square mirrors driven by 3-axis piezoelectric actuators. The feedback frequency is over 80 Hz and the displacement error is below 4 nm. The optical measurement results show that the state-locked operation is continuously maintained for hour-long periods in PID control mode.
KEYWORDS: Physics, Sapphire lasers, Optical amplifiers, Laser systems engineering, High power lasers, Laser applications, Solid state lasers, Near field optics, Crystals, Lawrencium
High-power solid-state laser programs at China Academy of Engineering Physics have made great progresses in recent years. A three-stage Ti:sapphire laser system, SILEX-I, was completed early in 2004 which could deliver 26-fs pulses at 5TW, 30TW, and 300TW to the corresponding target chambers for diverse applications. SILEX-I has been working very stably since its completion for experiments, demonstrating that it is the most powerful femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser for exploring strong-field phenomena in the world. The SG-III Nd:glass laser facility has been under conceptual design to meet the requirements from laser fusion applications. The SG-III facility is planned to have sixty-four beamlines divided into eight bundles with an output energy more than 100kJ at 0.35μm for 3- to 5-ns pulses. The eight-beamline TIL (Technical Integration Line), the prototype of the SG-III laser facility, has been installed in the new laboratory in Mianyang. The commissioning experiments have been conducted and one of the eight beams has produced 1-ns pulses of 3.0kJ and 1.2kJ at 1.053μm and 0.35μm, respectively. All the eight beamlines will be activated by the end of 2005 and completed in 2006 for operation. Meanwhile, the eight-beam SG-II laser in Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics has been operated for the experiments since 2001 and an additional beam, built in 2004, has been used for plasma backlighting experiments.
A Ti:sapphire laser system referred to as SILEX-I with the chirped pulse amplification technology has been built at CAEP which consists of three stages operating at 5TW, 30TW, and 300TW, each having a compressor and target chamber to meet different needs from diverse applications. The first and the second stages work at 10Hz, while the third at single shot. Pulse durations of 26fs have been obtained by installing an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) before the stretcher to compensate for the spectral gain narrowing in the regen. By taking a number of advanced measures for spatial beam control, such as spatial beam-shaping, relay-imaged propagation, precise alignment of compressor gratings and OAP, near-diffraction limited focal spots (FWHM) have been obtained. Focused intensities
are measured in the range of (1-5) x 1020W/cm2 with an f/2.2 OAP. The laser system will be able to operate at 500TW and even higher soon. The SILEX-I has been operated for experiments since its completion early in 2004, covering electron and proton acceleration, hot electron production, transport and deposition, neutron production, x-ray radiation, femtosecond laser pulse propagation in air, warm matter, and other strong-field studies. The laser system has shown an excellent stability and reliability and has been the most powerful femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser facility to operate for experiments in recent years.
A peak power of 286-TW Ti:sapphire laser facility referred to as SILEX-I was
successfully built at China Academy of Engineering Physics, for a pulse duration of 30 fs in
a three-stage Ti:sapphire amplifier chain based on chirped-pulse amplification. The beam
have a wavefront distortion of 0.63μm PV and 0.09μm RMS, and the focal spot with an
f/2.2 OAP is 5.7μm, to our knowledge, this is the best far field obtained for high-power
ultra-short pulse laser systems with no deformable mirror wavefront correction. The
peak focused intensity of ~1021W /cm2 were expected.
We have built a three-stage Ti:sapphire laser system at CAEP which could deliver 5-TW, 30-TW and 286-TW pulses to the corresponding target chambers for diverse applications with innovative high-power Ti:sapphire crystal amplifiers. Pulse durations of 30fs have been obtained by installing an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) before the stretcher to compensate for the spectral gain narrowing. By taking a number of advanced measures for spatial beam control, near-diffraction limited focal spots (FWHM) have been obtained which, to our knowledge, are the best far fields ever measured for the existing high-power Ti:sapphire laser systems without deformable mirror correction. Focused laser intensity is about 1021W/cm2 measured with an f/1.7 OAP. The laser system has the potential to operate at 500TW and even higher and laser intensities of 1022W/cm2 are expected with deformable mirror for wavefront correction and small f-number fine OAP for tighter focus added to the system in the near future.
A multihundred-terawatt Ti:sapphire laser facility was built at China Academy of Engineering Physics which could deliver femtosecond pulses at three power levels of 5TW, 30TW and hundreds TW to targets. Near-diffraction-limited focal spots were measured and it was found for the first time that alignment errors of grating groove parallelisms in compressors could be the major mechanism for producing elongated far fields. Pulse durations of 35fs were obtained with a Fastlite-produced AOPDF for spectral compensation.
This paper describes a short-pulse ultraviolet laser probe with multistage wavelength converters and nonlinear optical compression. Through fourth harmonic generation and double stage backward Raman scattering, pulses as short as 15 ps at 308 nm with more than 1 mJ energy and uniform beam pattern are successfully obtained. The whole probe system shows precise timing and good stability.
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