Design and properties analysis of multi-layer dielectric used in pulse compressor gratings

Used in chirped-pulse amplification system and based on multi-layer thin film stack, pulse compressor gratings (PCG) are etched by ion-beam and holographic techniques. Diffraction efficiency and laser-induced damage threshold rely on the structural parameters of gratings. On the other hand, they depend greatly on the design of multi-layer. A theoretic design is given for dielectric multi-layer, which is exposed at 413.1 nm and used at 1053 nm. The influences of coating design on optical characters are described in detail. The analysis shows that a coating stack of H3L (H2L) (boolean AND) 9H0.5L2.01H meets the specifications of PCG well. And there is good agreement of transmission between experimental and the theoretic design. (c) 2005 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Pulse-front matched ultra-broadband optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier for sub-12 fs pulse generation

We propose a LBO-based ultra-broadband chirped pulse optical parametric amplifier employing pulse-front-matching to yield transform-limited sub-12-fs pulses. Measurement of the maximum possible gain bandwidth for the LBO-based OPCPA demonstrates more than 60nm gain bandwidth FWHM. For the generation of TL pulses by the use of this OPCPA, a suitable combination of OPCPA and PFM is first presented. The PFM pump geometry realizes tilt-free signal amplification, and permits this OPCPA to generate TL sub-12-fs pulses.

啁啾脉冲放大系统空间特性的优化分析

采用Franz-Nodvik模型，通过模拟计算，系统地分析了啁啾脉冲放大（CPA）过程中抽运光和信号光能量密度以及晶体参量对放大器输出能量和转换效率的影响。将理论模拟与实验结果进行比较，证明了理论分析的有效性。计算结果表明：在啁啾脉冲放大系统中，存在一个抽运光最佳能量密度。合理选择抽运光的能量密度可以有效提高系统的能量转换效率和稳定性，而且还可以大大降低系统对注入信号光能量的要求以及由于信号光能量抖动所造成的输出不稳定性。

脉宽压缩光栅用的多层膜设计和性能分析

应用于啁啾脉冲放大技术中的脉宽压缩光栅是基于多层膜作为基底，利用全息干涉技术和离子束技术刻蚀而成。脉宽压缩光栅的衍射效率和抗激光损伤阈值一方面依赖于光栅结构的设计，另一方面很大程度上取决于作为基底的多层膜的设计。给出了以413．1nm作为写入波长，1053nm作为使用波长的多层介质光栅膜的设计．样品在ZZS-800F、型真空镀膜机上采用电子束蒸发方式沉积而成，并给出了膜系结构对光学性能影响因素的详细分析，结果表明膜系H3L(H2L)^9H0．5L2．03H满足光栅膜的指标。给出了样品光学特性测试，其使用波

全电介质脉宽压缩光栅的研究进展

超短脉冲超高能量激光器作为研究光和物质相互作用以及惯性约束聚变的手段而得到了广泛的应用。综述了应用于啁啾脉冲放大(CPA)系统的脉冲压缩光栅(PCG)的发展概况；分析和评述了脉宽压缩光栅的设计原理和制作工艺，并给出了脉宽压缩光栅的发展展望。实践和理论证明采用多层膜介质衍射光栅是实现高性能脉宽压缩光栅的一种优良的设计方案。

用于钕玻璃啁啾脉冲放大系统光谱整形的多层介质膜反射镜

在千焦拍瓦高功率啁啾脉冲放大系统设计中,为了尽量消除增益窄化和增益饱和效应的影响,同时尽可能提高高功率激光输出脉冲信噪比参数,激光脉冲时空和光谱的整形问题备受关注.提出一种光谱整形新方法,利用特定结构的多层介质膜反射镜,可实现对大能量高功率啁啾脉冲钕玻璃放大系统中啁啾脉冲的光谱整形.研究结果表明,只要合理选择多层介质膜系的结构参数,可有效地控制其反射率分布,且在保证反射相位基本不变的条件下其调制度可超过60%.针对钕玻璃1053nm波长设计而成的光谱整形反射镜,反射带宽可达到196nm,色分辨率约为0.1nm,在几十纳米波长范围所对应的相位偏差小于12mrad,相当于λ/524,能够满足"神光Ⅱ"千焦拍瓦改造的技术指标要求.

Experimental and theoretical analysis of nondegenerate ultrabroadband chirped pulse optical parametric amplification

Experimental investigations of nondegenerate ultrabroadband chirped pulse optical parametric amplification have been carried out. The general mathematical expressions for evaluating parametric bandwidth, gain and gain bandwidth for arbitrary three-wave mixing parametric amplifiers are presented. In our experiments, a type-I noncollinear phase-matched optical parametric amplifier based on lithium triborate, which was pumped by a 5-ns second harmonic pulses from a Q-switched Nd:YAG operating at 10 Hz, seeded by a 14-fs Ti:sapphire laser at 800 nm, was presented. The 0.85 nJ energy of input chirped signal pulse with 57-FWHM has been amplified to 3.1 muJ at pump intensity 3 GW/cm(2), the corresponding parametric gain reached 3.6 x 10(3), the 53 nm-FWHM gain spectrum bandwidth of output signal has been obtained. The large gain and broad gain bandwidth, which have been confirmed experimentally, provide great potentials to amplify efficiently the broad bandwidth femtosecond light pulses to generate new extremes in power, intensity, and pulse duration using optical parametric chirped pulse amplifiers pumped by powerful nanosecond systems.

Stacking chirped pulse optical parametric amplification

Stacking chirped pulse optical parametric amplification based on a home-built Yb(3+)-doped mode-locked fiber laser and an all-fiber pulse stacker has been demonstrated. Energic 11 mJ shaped pulses with pulse duration of 2.3 ns and a net total gain of higher than 1.1 x 10(7) at fluctuation less than 2% rms are achieved by optical parametric amplification pumped by a Q-switched Nd:YAG frequency-doubled laser, which provides a simple and efficient amplification scheme for temporally shaped pulses by stacking chirped pulse. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Compact 120 TW Ti: sapphire laser system with a high gain final amplifier

A 120TW/36fs laser system based on Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) has been successfully established in our lab. The final four pass Ti:sapphire amplifier pumped by an energetic single-shot Nd:YAG-Nd:glass laser was designed and optimized. With 24J/8ns pump energy at 532 nm, 300 mJ/220 ps chirped pulse was amplified to 5.98 J in this amplifier, and a total saturated gain of similar to 20 was achieved. The focused intensity of compressed beam could reach to 10(20) W/cm(2) with the M-2 of similar to 2.0. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A new double laser pulse pumping scheme for transient collisionally excited plasma soft X-ray lasers

Within this thesis a new double laser pulse pumping scheme for plasma-based, transient collisionally excited soft x-ray lasers (SXRL) was developed, characterized and utilized for applications. SXRL operations from ~50 up to ~200 electron volt were demonstrated applying this concept. As a central technical tool, a special Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser front-end was developed for the generation of fully controllable double-pulses to optimally pump SXRLs.rnThis Mach-Zehnder device is fully controllable and enables the creation of two CPA pulses of different pulse duration and variable energy balance with an adjustable time delay. Besides the SXRL pumping, the double-pulse configuration was applied to determine the B-integral in the CPA laser system by amplifying short pulse replica in the system, followed by an analysis in the time domain. The measurement of B-integral values in the 0.1 to 1.5 radian range, only limited by the reachable laser parameters, proved to be a promising tool to characterize nonlinear effects in the CPA laser systems.rnContributing to the issue of SXRL pumping, the double-pulse was configured to optimally produce the gain medium of the SXRL amplification. The focusing geometry of the two collinear pulses under the same grazing incidence angle on the target, significantly improved the generation of the active plasma medium. On one hand the effect was induced by the intrinsically guaranteed exact overlap of the two pulses on the target, and on the other hand by the grazing incidence pre-pulse plasma generation, which allows for a SXRL operation at higher electron densities, enabling higher gain in longer wavelength SXRLs and higher efficiency at shorter wavelength SXRLs. The observation of gain enhancement was confirmed by plasma hydrodynamic simulations.rnThe first introduction of double short-pulse single-beam grazing incidence pumping for SXRL pumping below 20 nanometer at the laser facility PHELIX in Darmstadt (Germany), resulted in a reliable operation of a nickel-like palladium SXRL at 14.7 nanometer with a pump energy threshold strongly reduced to less than 500 millijoule. With the adaptation of the concept, namely double-pulse single-beam grazing incidence pumping (DGRIP) and the transfer of this technology to the laser facility LASERIX in Palaiseau (France), improved efficiency and stability of table-top high-repetition soft x-ray lasers in the wavelength region below 20 nanometer was demonstrated. With a total pump laser energy below 1 joule the target, 2 mircojoule of nickel-like molybdenum soft x-ray laser emission at 18.9 nanometer was obtained at 10 hertz repetition rate, proving the attractiveness for high average power operation. An easy and rapid alignment procedure fulfilled the requirements for a sophisticated installation, and the highly stable output satisfied the need for a reliable strong SXRL source. The qualities of the DGRIP scheme were confirmed in an irradiation operation on user samples with over 50.000 shots corresponding to a deposited energy of ~ 50 millijoule.rnThe generation of double-pulses with high energies up to ~120 joule enabled the transfer to shorter wavelength SXRL operation at the laser facility PHELIX. The application of DGRIP proved to be a simple and efficient method for the generation of soft x-ray lasers below 10 nanometer. Nickel-like samarium soft x-ray lasing at 7.3 nanometer was achieved at a low total pump energy threshold of 36 joule, which confirmed the suitability of the applied pumping scheme. A reliable and stable SXRL operation was demonstrated, due to the single-beam pumping geometry despite the large optical apertures. The soft x-ray lasing of nickel-like samarium was an important milestone for the feasibility of applying the pumping scheme also for higher pumping pulse energies, which are necessary to obtain soft x-ray laser wavelengths in the water window. The reduction of the total pump energy below 40 joule for 7.3 nanometer short wavelength lasing now fulfilled the requirement for the installation at the high-repetition rate operation laser facility LASERIX.rn

Bloche-Maxwell treatment of amplification of high harmonic seed in soft x-ray laser amplifiers in both direct and chirped amplifications

Seeding plasma-based softx-raylaser (SXRL) demonstrated diffraction-limited, fully coherent in space and in time beam but with energy not exceeding 1 μJ per pulse. Quasi-steady-state (QSS) plasmas demonstrated to be able to store high amount of energy and then amplify incoherent SXRL up to several mJ. Using 1D time-dependant Bloch–Maxwell model including amplification of noise, we demonstrated that femtosecond HHG cannot be efficiently amplified in QSS plasmas. However, using Chirped Pulse Amplification concept on HHG seed allows to extract most of the stored energy, reaching up to 5 mJ in fully coherent pulses that can be compressed down to 130 fs.

Measurements of partial discharges-corrections to erroneous counts occurring in a cumulative pulse-counting system

The discharge pulse rates at different magnitude levels are often used as criteria for monitoring the partial-discharge aging of insulation systems. Use of suggested corrections for errors in cumulative probability counting leads to better use of available counters.

Towards a broadband chirped pulse Fourier transform microwave spectrometer

This article gives a brief review of microwave spectroscopy and the experimental techniques used for obtaining microwave spectrum of molecules and complexes since 1950s. It presents a brief summary of the pulsed nozzle Fourier transform microwave (PNFTMW) spectrometer, fabricated in our laboratory, and discusses some of the important results obtained using the spectrometer. The most significant among the results from this spectrometer is the direct structural determination of weakly bound complexes involving H2O/H2S. These have challenged the conventional wisdom on hydrogen bonding leading us to propose a modern definition for the same through IUPAC. The limitations of the PNFTMW spectrometer and the need for the new chirped pulse Fourier transform microwave spectrometer are discussed as well. Moreover, preliminary results from our laboratory on generating a 1 A mu s chirped pulse of 1 GHz bandwidth are given.

Generation of a short-duration ultrawideband chirped-pulse using CRLH transmission lines

In this paper we present the various design issues related to CRLH-Transmission lines for the generation of short duration Ultra-Wideband chirped-pulse. The major parameters of the CRLH Transmission lines affecting the BandWidth are discussed and methods to increase BandWidth are also suggested. Also presented is the role of components of CRLH Transmission lines in determining the chirp duration. The techniques of controlling the chirp duration by regulating these components are also discussed. Simulations results are also included.