A new publication in HPLSE reports on the commissioning of the ELI-NP laser facility, with two operational beamlines at 10 PW each, demonstrating world leading performance and a great landmark in global capability.

Caption: (Left) Extraction efficiency for the 10 PW level amplifier AMP3.2. (Right) Reconstructed pulse with τ = 22.7 FWHM duration.

High-energy hybrid femtosecond laser system demonstrating 2 × 10 PW capability. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, Volume 8, 2020, e43. DOI:10.1017/hpl.2020.41.

François Lureau, Guillaume Matras, Olivier Chalus, Christophe Derycke, Thomas Morbieu, Christophe Radier, Olivier Casagrande, Sébastien Laux, Sandrine Ricaud, Gilles Rey, Alain Pellegrina, Caroline Richard, Laurent Boudjemaa, Christophe Simon-Boisson, Andrei Baleanu, Romeo Banici, Andrei Gradinariu, Constantin Caldararu, Bertrand De Boisdeffre, Petru Ghenuche, Andrei Naziru, Georgios Kolliopoulos, Liviu Neagu, Razvan Dabu, Ioan Dancus and Daniel Ursescu

Abstract

We report on a two-arm hybrid high-power laser system (HPLS) able to deliver 2 × 10 PW femtosecond pulses, developed at the Bucharest-Magurele Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) Facility. A hybrid front-end (FE) based on a Ti:sapphire chirped pulse amplifier and a picosecond optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier based on beta barium borate (BBO) crystals, with a cross-polarized wave (XPW) filter in between, has been developed. It delivers 10 mJ laser pulses, at 10 Hz repetition rate, with more than 70 nm spectral bandwidth and high-intensity contrast, in the range of 10¹³:1. The high-energy Ti:sapphire amplifier stages of both arms were seeded from this common FE. The final high-energy amplifier, equipped with a 200 mm diameter Ti:sapphire crystal, has been pumped by six 100 J nanosecond frequency doubled Nd:glass lasers, at 1 pulse/min repetition rate. More than 300 J output pulse energy has been obtained by pumping with only 80% of the whole 600 J available pump energy. The compressor has a transmission efficiency of 74% and an output pulse duration of 22.7 fs was measured, thus demonstrating that the dual-arm HPLS has the capacity to generate 10 PW peak power femtosecond pulses. The reported results represent the cornerstone of the ELI-NP 2 × 10 PW femtosecond laser facility, devoted to fundamental and applied nuclear physics research.

HPLSE is an open access and peer-reviewed journal publishing high impact results in the fields of high energy density physics, high power lasers, advanced laser technology and applications, and laser component. It has been included in SCIE and Scopus.

HPLSE is co-published by Chinese Laser Press (CLP) at Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM), and Cambridge University Press (CUP). Articles are published online shortly after acceptance.