Peta watt class laser in Japan

Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Nagashima, Keisuke; Ochi, Yoshihiro; Mori, Michiaki; Tanaka, Momoko; Sasao, Fumitaka; Kosuge, Atsushi  ; Okada, Hajime; Kondo, Kiminori; Sagisaka, Akito; Ogura, Koichi; Nishiuchi, Mamiko; Fukuda, Yuji; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Kando, Masaki; Kotaki, Hideyuki; Daito, Izuru; Hayashi, Yukio; Bulanov, S. V.; Suzuki, Masayuki; Bolton, P.; Daido, Hiroyuki; Yokoyama, Atsushi; Kawanishi, Shunichi; Yamagiwa, Mitsuru; Yogo, Akifumi; Tajima, Toshiki*

We have developed a femtosecond high intensity laser system, which combines both Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) and optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) techniques, that produces more than 30 J broadband output energy, indicating the potential for achieving peak powers in excess of 500 TW. With a cleaned high-energy seeded OPCPA preamplifier as a front-end in the system, for the final compressed pulse we found that the temporal contrast in this system exceeds 10 on the sub-nanosecond timescale before the main femtosecond pulse. Using diffractive optical elements for beam homogenization of 100-J level high-energy Nd:glass green pump laser in a Ti:sapphire final amplifier, we have successfully generated broadband high-energy output with near-perfect top-hat intensity distributions.