High temporal and spatial quality petawatt-class Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification laser system

Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Mori, Michiaki; Nakai, Yoshiki; Shimomura, Takuya; Sasao, Hajime; Tanoue, Manabu*; Kanazawa, Shuhei; Wakai, Daisuke*; Sasao, Fumitaka*; Okada, Hajime; Daito, Izuru; Suzuki, Masayuki; Kondo, Shuji; Kondo, Kiminori; Sugiyama, Akira; Bolton, P.; Yokoyama, Atsushi; Daido, Hiroyuki; Kawanishi, Shunichi; Kimura, Toyoaki*; Tajima, Toshiki

OPCPA (Optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification) operation with low gain by seeding with high energy, clean pulses is shown to significantly improve the contrast to better than - in a high intensity Ti:sapphire laser system that is based on chirped pulse amplification. In addition to the high contrast broadband high energy output from the final amplifier is achieved with a flat-topped spatial profile of filling factor near 77%. This is the result of pump beam spatial profile homogenization with diffractive optical elements. Final pulse energies exceed 30-Joules indicating capability for reaching peak powers in excess of 500-TW.