Development of a high-contrast, high-beam quality, high-intensity laser

Kiriyama, Hiromitsu; Mori, Michiaki; Shimomura, Takuya; Tanoue, Manabu; Kondo, Shuji; Kanazawa, Shuhei; Daito, Izuru; Suzuki, Masayuki*; Okada, Hajime; Ochi, Yoshihiro; Kosuge, Atsushi  ; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Tanaka, Momoko; Fukuda, Yuji; Nishiuchi, Mamiko; Kando, Masaki; Nagashima, Keisuke; Yamagiwa, Mitsuru; Kondo, Kiminori; Sugiyama, Akira; Bulanov, S. V.; Bolton, P.; Daido, Hiroyuki; Kimura, Toyoaki*; Tajima, Toshiki*; Sato, Masatoshi*; Tamaoki, Yoshinori*; Yoshii, Takehiro*; Maeda, Junya*; Matsuoka, Shinichi*; Kan, Hirofumi*; Miyanaga, Noriaki*

We describe two specific high intensity laser systems that are being developed in our laboratory for many applications such as high field science, nonlinear optics. We report on an ultra-high intensity petawatt-class Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification laser system that can produce a pulse energy of 18 J with 30 fs pulse duration for studying extremely high intensity laser matter interaction process and a small-scaled Yb:YAG chirped-pulse amplification laser system that can generate a pulse energy of 100 m J of 500 fs pulse duration for compact, high efficiency, high repetition system. We discuss the basic design aspects and present the results from our experimental investigations of these laser systems.