Xiaoming Zeng

SILEX-I: 300-TW Ti:sapphire laser

Based on chirped pulse amplification technology, we have built a Ti:sapphire laser system, called SILEX-I (superintense laser for experiments on extremes), at CAEP, which consists of three stages with 5-, 30-, and 300-TW outputs, respectively. The first and the second stages work at 10 Hz, while the third works at single shot. Pulse durations of 30 fs have been obtained by installing an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) 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 calculated at (1–3) × 1020 W/cm2 with an f/2.2 OAP.SILEX-I has shown an excellent stability and reliability in operations for applications since its completion and will soon be able to operate at 500 TW.

Acquiring 1053 nm femtosecond laser emission by optical parametric amplification based on supercontinuum white-light injection

We report a terawatt-Ti:sapphire-laser-pumped high-energy femtosecond optical parametric amplifier (OPA) with supercontinuum white-light injection. Signal pulses with a duration less than 100 fs and energy up to 4 mJ are obtained with large-aperture LiNbO3 crystals. This megajoule-class femtosecond OPA at 1053 nm presents a feasible alternative to optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification and is ready to be applied to petawatt lasers.

High-power solid-state lasers for high-energy-density physics applications at CAEP

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.

286-TW Ti:sapphire laser at CAEP

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.

Progress on developing a PW ultrashort laser facility with ns, ps, and fs outputting pulses

A petawatt laser facility with three beams for fast ignition research and strong-field physics applications has been designed and is being constructed. The first beam (referred as SILEX-I) is a Ti:sapphire femto-second laser which pulse width is 30 fs, and till now, output power has reached to 330 TW. The other two beams are Nd3+:glass lasers which output energy are larger than 1kJ and pulse width are about 1ps and 1ns respectively. By using the technology of OPA pumped by 800nm femtosecond laser and seeded by super-continuum spectrum white light, the three beams are synchronized with each other without jitter time. By using the seeds from OPA pumped by femtosecond laser, and by using the pre-amplification stage of OPCPA, the signal to noise ratio of the Nd3+:glass petawatt laser will reach to 108. Active methods are taken to control the gain narrowing effect of the Nd3+:glass amplifiers, giving the option to compress the chirped pulse to ultrashort pulse with width less than 400fs. Tiled multilayer dielectric coating gratings are used for the compressor of the PW beam, which has been successfully demonstrated on a 100J picosecond Nd3+:glass laser system.

Chirped-pulse amplification system based on chirp reversal and near-field spatial reversal with common tiled grating pair as stretcher and compressor

Chirped-pulse amplification system based on chirp reversal in optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The operation of this system can be described as negative stretching-temporal chirp reversal-energy amplification-negative compression, in which the pulse is stretched and compressed with the same gratings. Stand-alone stretcher adopting lenses or concave mirrors with large aperture can be omitted. Simulations showed that this work mode can also increase the cut-off band-pass of the whole system and increase the output energy by 15-17%. In addition, the stability of a tiled-grating compressor can be improved with this work mode.

Introduction of SILEX-I Femto-second Ti:sapphire laser Facility

We have built a Ti:sapphire laser system, referred to as SILEX-I, with a peak power of 286TW for a pulse duration of 30fs using chirped-pulse amplification technique. A number of spectral and spatio-temporal beam control measures have been taken and near-diffraction limited focal spots have been obtained which, to our knowledge, are the best far fields ever measured for any existing high-power Ti:sapphire laser system without deformable mirror corrections.

Progress on the XG-III high-intensity laser facility with three synchronized beams

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.

Recent progress and future prospects of high-energy peta-watt laser in LFRC, CAEP

The laser system with output energy larger than 150 Joules, output pulse width less than 1-ps has been finished in last year in Research Center of Laser Fusion (LFRC) at China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP). The front-end of the system can emit 4-mJ, 1053-nm femtosecond laser by optical parametric amplification based on supercontinuum white-light injection. Then the laser is stretched to chirped pulse with 2ns pulse duration and amplified to near 200 Joules by multi-stage phosphate Nd:glass amplifiers. Subsequent amplification in a chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) chain will result in a sometimes substantial lengthening of the output pulses owing to gain narrowing and uncompensated phase errors. The acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter (AOPDF) [2] is used to modulate the amplitude and phase of ultrashort pulses in order to maintain the short pulse duration after amplification. The size of a single gratings is not enough for high energy pulse compression, Therefore we developed tiled-gratings technology. A single-pass tiled-gratings-compressor (TGC) [3] is used in this system. Real-time monitoring and on-line alignment system has been established to achieve coherent addition of the tiled gratings. Impact of vibration being eliminated to a least level, the tiled gratings can keep stable for a several hours.

High-accuracy measurement and compensation of grating line-density error in a tiled-grating compressor

The grating tiling technology is one of the most effective means to increase the aperture of the gratings. The line-density error (LDE) between sub-gratings will degrade the performance of the tiling gratings, high accuracy measurement and compensation of the LDE are of significance to improve the output pulses characteristics of the tiled-grating compressor. In this paper, the influence of LDE on the output pulses of the tiled-grating compressor is quantitatively analyzed by means of numerical simulation, the output beams drift and output pulses broadening resulting from the LDE are presented. Based on the numerical results we propose a compensation method to reduce the degradations of the tiled grating compressor by applying angular tilt error and longitudinal piston error at the same time. Moreover, a monitoring system is setup to measure the LDE between sub-gratings accurately and the dispersion variation due to the LDE is also demonstrated based on spatial-spectral interference. In this way, we can realize high-accuracy measurement and compensation of the LDE, and this would provide an efficient way to guide the adjustment of the tiling gratings.