We report on the development of a Nd:YVO4 based regenerative amplifier, producing more than 25W of average power
at 200kHz, with a pulse length of 10ps at 1064nm. The amplifier is seeded by a low power, mode-locked fiber laser. The
amplifier output has been used for the generation of high energy second and third harmonics with up to 80% conversion
to 532nm and 40% to 355nm. The average power of the amplifier has been increased further using a single pass linear
amplifier to produce 54W at 200kHz.
Advances in the output powers and beam quality of DPSS lasers have provided tens of Watts of green pump power in a
reliable and compact form. This paper describes advances in the performance of both single frequency CW and
femtosecond modelocked Ti:Sapphire (Ti:S) lasers using such high power pump lasers. Short wavelength performance
below 660 nm for the CW system is described and long wavelength tunability beyond 1100 nm. Continuous tunability of
the modelocked system of over 400 nm will be presented and power performance for different output coupling and pump
levels described. The applicability of these high performance systems to demanding new applications will also be
described.
We demonstrate a highly efficient source of single frequency 266 nm light. A single frequency 532 nm source is frequency doubled in an external ring cavity. Almost 50% internal conversion efficiency in the nonlinear crystal gives a useable output of 660 mW at 266 nm, from 2 W at 532 nm, and up to 1.5 W at 266 nm from 5 W at 532 nm.
Colin Danson, L. Barzanti, Chungu Zenghu, A. Damerell, Mike Dooley, Christopher Edwards, S. Hancock, Michael Key, R. Mahadeo, M. Miller, Peter Norreys, C. Ollman, David Pepler, D. Rodkiss, Ian Ross, M. Smith, P. Taday, W. Toner, K. Wigmore, T. Winstone, R. Wyatt, Shen Luan, F. Beg, Angus Bell, A. Dangor, Marcus Hutchinson, P. Lee, Ian Mercer, Roland Smith, F. Zhou, A. Fews
A Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) mode of operation is being developed on the VULCAN high power Nd:glass laser system, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). Experiments have been carried out using an interim configuration yielding pulses of up to 30 J on target of 2.4 picoseconds length at focused intensities up to 4 X 1017 W cm-2, with contrast ratio of 106. In the CPA technique the amplification of a stretched pulse to high energy followed by recompression provides a means of delivering a higher peak power to target than can be propagated through the laser system due to non-linear effects and component damage thresholds. In the system described here a grating pair is used to stretch a transform limited pulse of 2 ps, to 80 ps prior to amplification to high energy (80 J). The linear stretch produced by the gratings enables the pulse to be recompressed without pedestal. Recompression to the 10 TW level by a second grating pair is carried out in a vacuum propagation and reflective focusing system to avoid non-linear effects in air, windows and lenses.
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