Design of a Femtosecond Ti:sapphire Laser for Generation and Temporal Optimization of 0.5-PW Laser Pulses at a 0.1-Hz Repetition Rate

Abstract

A chirped-pulse amplification Ti:sapphire laser system has been designed using a 10-Hz 100-TW Ti:sapphire laser to generate 0.1-Hz 0.5-PW laser pulses and optimize their temporal qualities such as temporal contrast and pulse duration. A high-energy booster amplifier to be added is expected to produce an energy above 30 J through the parasitic lasing suppression and the efficient amplification. To improve the temporal contrast of the laser pulses, a high-contrast 1-kHz amplifier system is used as a front-end. A grating stretcher which makes the laser pulse have 1-ns duration is used to prevent optical damages clue to high pulse energy during amplification. A grating compressor has been designed with group delay analysis to obtain the recompressed pulse duration close to the transform-limited pulse duration. The final laser pulses are expected to have energy above 20 J and duration below 40 fs.