Pulse contrast enhancement at the Orion laser facility

Author

Elsmere, S.P. ; Bett, Thomas ; Danson, Colin ; Duffield, S. ; Egan, David ; Girling, M.T. ; Harvey, Ewan ; Hillier, D.I. ; Hopps, Nicholas ; Hoarty, D. ; Hussey, D. ; Norman, Michael ; Parker, Stefan ; Treadwell, Paul ; Winter, David

Author_Institution

AWE, Reading, UK

fYear

2013

fDate

12-16 May 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

The Orion laser facility provides a capability for performing high energy density plasma physics experiments at AWE. The laser consists of ten long pulse (nanosecond) beam lines delivering a total of 5 kJ at 351 nm with 0.1-5 ns temporally shaped pulses and two short pulse Petawatt beam lines, each producing 500 J in 0.5 ps with intensities to target > 10²¹ W/cm². The short pulse beam architecture is that of an OPCPA (optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier).

Keywords

high-speed optical techniques; optical parametric amplifiers; optical pulse shaping; AWE; OPCPA; Orion laser facility; energy 5 kJ; energy 500 J; high energy density plasma physics; nanosecond beam lines; optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier; optical pulse shaping; pulse contrast enhancement; short pulse Petawatt beam lines; wavelength 351 nm; Apertures; Frequency conversion; Laser beams; Laser theory; Measurement by laser beam; Pulse measurements;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe (CLEO EUROPE/IQEC), 2013 Conference on and International Quantum Electronics Conference

Conference_Location

Munich

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0593-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE-IQEC.2013.6801176

Filename

6801176