Zbyněk Hubka

Thin disk amplifier-based 40 mJ, 1 kHz, picosecond laser at 515 nm.

We report on a frequency-doubled picosecond Yb:YAG thin disk regenerative amplifier, developed as a pump laser for a kilohertz repetition rate OPCPA. At a repetition rate of 1 kHz, the compressed output of the regenerative amplifier has a pulse duration of 1.2 ps and pulse energy of 90 mJ with energy stability of σ < 0.8% and M2 < 1.2. The pulses are frequency doubled in an LBO crystal yielding 42 mJ at 515 nm.

Broadband OPCPA system with 11 mJ output at 1 kHz, compressible to 12 fs

We report on a broadband OPCPA system, pumped at 515 nm by frequency doubled Yb:YAG thin disk lasers. The system delivers 11.3 mJ pulses at a central wavelength of 800 nm with a spatial beam quality of M2 = 1.25 and > 25% pump-to-signal conversion efficiency. The broadband pulses were demonstrated to be compressible to 12 fs using a chirped mirror compressor.

Multi-channel, fiber-based seed pulse distribution system for femtosecond-level synchronized chirped pulse amplifiers

We report on the design and performance of a fiber-based, multi-channel laser amplifier seed pulse distribution system. The device is designed to condition and distribute low energy laser pulses from a mode-locked oscillator to multiple, highly synchronized, high energy amplifiers integrated into a laser beamline. Critical functions such as temporal pulse stretching well beyond 100 ps/nm, pulse picking, and fine control over the pulse delay up to 300 ps are all performed in fiber eliminating the need for bulky and expensive grating stretchers, Pockels cells, and delay lines. These functions are characterized and the system as a whole is demonstrated by seeding two high energy amplifiers in the laser beamline. The design of this system allows for complete computer control of all functions, including tuning of dispersion, and is entirely hands-free. The performance of this device and its subsystems will be relevant to those developing lasers where reliability, size, and cost are key concerns in addition to performance; this includes those developing large-scale laser systems similar to ours and also those developing table-top experiments and commercial systems.

Development of high energy, sub-15 fs OPCPA system operating at 1 kHz repetition rate for ELI-Beamlines facility

We report on the status of the high repetition rate, high energy, L1 laser beamline at the ELI-Beamlines facility. The beamline is based on picosecond optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) of pulses from a mode-locked Ti:Sapphire oscillator and has a target energy/repetition rate of 100 mJ/1 kHz with < 15fs pulse duration. The OPCPA pump lasers use thin disk technology to achieve the high energy and average power required to pump such a high energy, high repetition rate broadband amplifier. Here we report on the progress in beamline development and discuss the technical challenges involved in producing such a system and their solutions. A major focus of the laser development is reliable, robust operation and long term stability; mechanical, optical, and control system architecture design considerations to achieve our goals of long term stability are discussed.

Active cavity stabilization for high energy thin disk regenerative amplifier

We present an active cavity pointing stabilization system based on a novel method that tracks the cavity mode position directly on the thin disk gain medium itself. Here, the overlap of the lasing cavity with the pump, visible as a depletion within the pumped area, is most crucial to the stability of the laser. Short term stability as well as long term stability are significantly increased enabling day long operation, directly from a cold start of the laser system, without the need for thermalization and manual alignment.

Cryogenic Tm:YAP microchip laser

The spectral characteristics of laser active media, and thus those of the laser output, are temperature dependent. Specifically, in almost every crystal host, cooling to low temperatures leads to better heat removal, a higher efficiency and output power, and a reduced lasing threshold. Tm-ion doped lasers have an emission wavelength around 2 μm and are important in medicine for soft tissue cutting and hemostasis, as well as in LIDAR or atmosphere sensing technology. This paper presents the performance-temperature dependency of a 4 at. % doped Tm:YAP microchip. During the experiment the Tm:YAP crystal was placed inside an evacuated liquid nitrogen cryostat on a cooling finger. As its temperature was varied from 80 K to 340 K, changes were observed in the absorption spectrum, ranging from 750 nm to 2000 nm and in the fluorescence spectrum from 1600 nm to 2050 nm. Fluorescence lifetime was seen to rise and fall with decreasing temperature. The laser was pumped by a 792 nm laser diode and at 80 K the maximum output peak power of the laser was 4.6 W with 23 % slope efficiency and 0.6 W threshold, compared to 2.4 W output peak power, 13 % slope efficiency and 3.3 W threshold when at 340 K. The laser emission wavelength changed from 1883 nm to 1993 nm for 80 K and 300 K, respectively.

Design of kW level picosecond compressor of pump pulses for high power OPCPA

We present a design of a high average power vacuum compressor unit for 1 kHz repetition rate pump laser operating at 1030 nm. The unit comprises two compressors and two SHG units located in a common vacuum vessel. Both compressors are designed with GDD of -270.5 ps2 for compressing high energy, 1J, 500 ps pulses to 1.5 ps duration with efficiency that exceeds 88.5%. We also considered the feasibility of high efficiency, average power conversion to 515 nm in a range of nonlinear crystals in vacuum. The calculated temperature profiles in large aperture crystals are compared with temperature acceptance bandwidths for the second harmonic generation. It is concluded that in LBO and YCOB crystals the conversion efficiency can exceed 60%, thus allowing generation of 1 kHz train of 1.5 ps pulses at 515 nm with energy exceeding 0.5 J that will be used for pumping the high energy amplifier stages of a femtosecond OPCPA system.

Investigation of Yb:LuAG crystals with high doping concentration

Two Yb:LuAG (Yb:Lu3Al5O12) plates (thickness 1.05 mm, diameter 3 mm, AR/AR @ 0.9 − 1.1 μm, Yb-doping c = 15% and 20 %) were prepared for laser experiments. For Yb:LuAG pumping, fibre coupled laser diode operating in pulsed regime was used (fibre core diameter 100 μm, emission wavelength 968 nm, pulse length 2 ms, repetition rate 10 Hz, maximum energy 40 mJ). The longitudinally pumped Yb:LuAG was placed inside the 148mm long resonator formed by a flat pumping mirror (HR @ 1.0 − 1.1 μm, HT @ 0.97 μm) and by a curved output coupler (radius of curvature 150 mm). Set of output couplers with reflectivity R = 70 − 97% @ 1.0−1.1 μm was used and the output power amplitude was measured in dependence on absorbed pumping power amplitude. It was found that for both samples the output coupler reflectivity had only minor influence on laser output parameters expect emission wavelength (1048nm for R < 90% and otherwise 1031 nm). The sample with lower concentration had a lower threshold (∼ 2.5W for c = 15% and ∼ 3.0W for c = 20%) and higher slope efficiency (∼ 61% for c = 15% and ∼ 50% for c = 20 %). The maximum output power amplitude 6.7W was obtained using Yb:LuAG with c = 20% and R = 92% for pumping power amplitude 14W. Obtained results confirmed the good quality of newly grown highly doped Yb:LuAG crystals.

Robust method for long-term energy and pointing stabilization of high energy, high average power solid state lasers

A robust and simple method is presented for ensuring constant energy and pointing of a high average power solid state laser on a target. In addition to providing long-term stability, this scheme also eliminates any drifts in energy or pointing resulting from the initial warm-up after a cold start. This is achieved using two separate feedback loops: one loop stabilizes the pointing of the beam external to the amplifier cavity and the other locks the cavity mode to have optimum overlap with the pump spot on the active medium. The key idea of the cavity mode stabilization is to monitor the overlap of the cavity mode and the gain medium with a camera and control it with an actively controlled, intra-cavity mirror. While this method is demonstrated on a thin-disk regenerative amplifier, it can also be applied to a wide variety of solid state laser amplifiers.

Fiber-based front ends for extreme light applications

For most extreme light applications, a reliable and stable driver laser is crucial to successful experiments. As lasers grow in energy and peak power they become increasingly complex and more failure modes are introduced to the system as a whole. For this reason it is prudent to develop a laser with simplicity, repeatability, and durability in mind. With the wide commercial availability of high quality, inexpensive fiber components, much of the required pulse conditioning for seeding high energy laser systems can take place entirely in fiber. This allows for much of the laser front end to be compact, alignment-free, and computer controlled with potentially dramatic savings in cost and space on the optical table. Here we explore some of the current trends in fiberbased front ends for high peak power laser systems. The requirements for any given high peak power laser are always quite different and fiber front ends are enormously customizable, so here we present two basic versions of fiber front ends which are used at the ELI-Beamlines facility which resemble other common fiber front end architectures.