High-Stability High-Energy Picosecond Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplifier as a Preamplifier in Nd：Glass Petawatt System for Contrast Enhancement

We demonstrate a novel picosecond optical parametric preamplification to generate high-stability, high-energy and high-contrast seed pulses. The 5ps seed pulse is amplified from 60pJ to 300μJ with an 8.6ps/ 3mJ pump laser in a signal stage of short pulse non-collinear optical parametric chirped pulse amplification. The total gain is more than 106 and the rms energy stability is under 1.35%. The contrast ratio is higher than 10s within a scale of 20ps before the main pulse. Consequently, the improvement factor of the signal contrast is approximately equal to the gain 106 outside the pump window.

Spectral-Phase-Modulated Cross-Polarized Wave for Chirped Pulse Amplifier with High Contrast Ratio

We demonstrate a high-quality cross-polarized-wave filter based on spectral phase modulation. Driven by Well- eompressed spectral-phase fully-compensated fundamental laser lmlses, the filter stretches the pulse bandwidth from 35 nm to 7Ohm with a conversion efficeiency of 20%.

Coherent beam combining of two all‑PM thulium‑doped fiber chirped pulse amplifiers

In this paper,we report a coherent beam combining(CBC)system that involves two thulium-doped all-polarization maintaining(PM)fiber chirped pulse amplifiers.Through phase-locking the two channels via a fiber stretcher by using the stochastic parallel gradient descent(SPGD)algorithm,a maximum average power of 265 W is obtained,with a CBC efficiency of 81%and a residual phase error of λ/17.After de-chirping by a pair of diffraction gratings,the duration of the combined laser pulse is compressed to 690 fs.Taking into account the compression efficiency of 90%and the main peak energy proportion of 91%,the corresponding peak power is calculated to be 4 MW.The laser noise characteristics before and after CBC are examined,and the results indicate that the CBC would degrade the low frequency relative intensity noise(RIN),of which the integration is 1.74%in[100 Hz,2 MHz]at the maximum combined output power.In addition,the effects of the nonlinear spectrum broadening during chirped pulse amplification on the CBC efficiency are also investigated,showing that a higher extent of pulse stretching is effective in alleviating the spectrum broadening and realizing a higher output power with decent combining efficiency.

Grating-free 2.8μm Er:ZBLAN fiber chirped pulse amplifier

We report on a grating-free fiber chirped pulse amplifier(CPA)at 2.8μm for the first time.The CPA system adopted Er:ZBLAN fiber with large anomalous dispersion as the stretcher and germanium(Ge)rods as the compressor with a compact structure.High-energy picosecond pulses of 2.07μJ were generated at the repetition rate of 100 kHz.Using highly dispersive Ge rods,the amplified pulses were compressed to 408 fs with a pulse energy of 0.57μJ,resulting in a peak power of approximately 1.4 MW.A spectral broadening phenomenon in the main amplifier was observed,which was caused by the special gain shape of the Er:ZBLAN fiber amplifier in operation and confirmed by our numerical simulation.This compact fiber CPA system at 2.8μm will be practical and meaningful for application fields.

High-efficiency bismuth borate-based optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier with approximately 2.1 mJ,38 fs output pulses at approximately 2150 nm

We present a compact and cost-effective mJ-level femtosecond laser system operating at a center wavelength of approximately 2.15μm.An affordable two-stage ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet(Yb:YAG)chirped pulse amplifier provides more than 10 mJ,approximately 1.2 ps pulses at 1030 nm to pump a three-stage optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier(OPCPA)based on bismuth borate crystals and to drive the supercontinuum seed in the YAG crystal.The energy of the amplified pulses in the wavelength range of 1.95–2.4μm reached 2.25 mJ with a pump-tosignal conversion efficiency of approximately 25%in the last OPCPA stage.These pulses were compressed to 38 fs in a pair of Suprasil 300 glass prisms.