Cryogenically Cooled Yb:YAG Ceramic Amplifier Modules For High Power Lasers

摘要

There is currently a growing demand for multijoule pulsed laser sources for a variety of applications including materials processing and amplification of ultrashort pulses up to extremely high intensities for high energy particle acceleration, X-ray generation and Fast Ignition Laser Fusion. Ultrashort optical pulses (femtosecond to picosecond)can be amplified to high energies by chirped pulse amplification, where the pulse is stretched in time before amplification to avoid high intensity optical damage. Due to the minimum Fourier time-bandwidth product, short pulses naturally have a large bandwidth, which allows the use of positive optical dispersion with diffraction gratings or a fiber to stretch(chirp) the amplifier input pulse before amplification to about one nanosescond duration. After amplification, the stretched pulse is then compressed to a short pulse by a compensating negative dispersion system(compressor), using gratings or prisms.