Patricia Ramirez

Energy-scalable temporal cleaning device for femtosecond laser pulses based on cross-polarized wave generation

We report on a compact energy-scalable device for generating high-fidelity femtosecond laser pulses based on spatial filtering through a hollow-core fiber followed by a nonlinear crystal for cross-polarized wave (XPW) generation. This versatile device is suited for temporal pulse cleaning over a wide range of input energies (from 0.1 to >10 mJ) and is successfully qualified on different ultrafast laser systems. Full characterization of the XPW output is presented. In particular, we demonstrate the generation of 1.6 mJ energy pulses starting from 11 mJ input pulse energy. The temporal contrast of the pulses is enhanced by more than 4 orders of magnitude. In addition, pulse shortening from 40 fs down to 15 fs Fourier-transform limit yields an overall peak-power transmission of up to 50%. This device not only serves as an integrated pulse contrast filter inside an ultrafast laser amplifier but also as a simple back-end solution for temporal post-compression of amplified pulses.

Compact, simple, and robust cross polarized wave generation source of few-cycle, high-contrast pulses for seeding petawatt-class laser systems

A compact and robust, dual-crystal cross polarized wave generation setup combined with a hollow waveguide filter is implemented to deliver few-cycle, high-contrast laser pulses sourced from a commercial multipass Ti:Sa amplifier. The initial 25-fs pulses with a temporal contrast of 108 are shortened to 10 fs with an improved contrast of at least 10^10. The single nonlinear stage for spectral broadening and contrast enhancement of a commercial amplifier serves as an ideal injector for petawatt-class laser systems.

Front‐end of the ILE Project: A design study for a 100 mJ sub‐10 fs laser

Within the development of the ILE French project aiming on the building of a 10 PW, 150 J/15 fs laser chain (named APOLLON), a design study for a sub‐10‐fs, 100 mJ pilot laser operating at 800 nm have been conceived. This system is based on a non‐collinear optical parametric chirped‐pulse amplification (NOPCPA) of the spectrally broadened and compressed pulses of a Ti:Sapphire laser system providing 1.5‐mJ, 25‐fs, pumped at 515 nm by a high‐energy diode‐pumped Yb‐doped‐based laser chain. The envisioned system, based on a novel combined architecture of picosecond and nanosecond NOPCPA stages, will finally deliver carrier envelope phased (CEP) stabilized 1 ns pulses (compressible to less than 10 fs) at 800 nm with 100 mJ energy and at a repetition rate in the range of 10–100 Hz.