Design of pump beam homogenizers for Petawatt class Ti:Sapphire systems using MIRO code

Author

Canova, Federico ; Chambaret, Jean-Paul

Author_Institution

Ecole Polytech., Palaiseau

fYear

2007

fDate

17-22 June 2007

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

The pumping of large Ti:sapphire crystals, in order to reach petawatt-level laser amplification, is the careful control of the spatial energy distribution of 100 Joule-class SHG Nd:glass pump lasers. Nanosecond neodymium-based pump lasers exhibit poor spatial and temporal profile quality, which can lead to local hot spots, responsible for strong intensity modulations and irreversible damage to the expensive Ti: Sapphire crystal. We have studied and designed pump beam homogenizers using MIRO simulation code. The performances of diffractive optical systems to smoothen the spatial and temporal profiles of intense nanosecond pump beams are strongly dependent on input beam temporal and spatial coherence.

Keywords

diffractive optical elements; laser beams; optical design techniques; optical harmonic generation; optical pumping; sapphire; solid lasers; titanium; Al₂O₃:Ti; MIRO simulation code; SHG Nd:glass pump lasers; diffractive optical systems; energy 100 J; nanosecond pump beams; petawatt class titanium:sapphire systems; pump beam homogenizer design; spatial coherence; spatial energy distribution; spatial profile quality; temporal coherence; temporal profile quality; Crystals; Intensity modulation; Laser beams; Laser excitation; Optical control; Optical diffraction; Optical harmonic generation; Optical modulation; Optical pumping; Pump lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 2007 and the International Quantum Electronics Conference. CLEOE-IQEC 2007. European Conference on

Conference_Location

Munich

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-0931-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-0931-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE-IQEC.2007.4386356

Filename

4386356