A focal-spot diagnostic for on-shot characterization of high-energy petawatt lasers.

Optimization of the dynamic wavefront control of a pulsed kilojoule/nanosecond-petawatt laser facility.

The wavefront aberrations in a large-scale, flash-lamp-pumped, high-energy, high-power glass laser system can degrade considerably the quality of the final focal spot, and limit severely the repetition rate. The various aberrations induced on the Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (LULI), laser facility (LULI2000) throughout the amplification are identified and analyzed in detai...

Repetitive petawatt-class laser with near-diffraction-limited focal spot and transform-limited pulse duration

A repetitive petawatt-class Ti:sapphire laser system operating with high spatial and temporal beam quality is demonstrated. Maximum pulse energy of 30 J is obtained via five multi-pass amplification stages. Closed-loop feedback control systems in the temporal and spatial domains are used to yield Fourier-transform-limited pulse duration (33.7 fs), and diffraction-limited focal spot sizes (with ...

Adaptive Optics for High-Peak-Power Lasers – An Optical Adaptive Closed-Loop Used for High-Energy Short-Pulse Laser Facilities: Laser Wave-Front Correction and Focal-Spot Shaping

Wave-front correction of femtosecond terawatt lasers by deformable mirrors.

Wave-front correction and focal spot improvement of femtosecond laser beams have been achieved, for the first time to our knowledge, with a deformable mirror with an on-line single-shot three-wave lateral shearing interferometer diagnostic. Wave-front distortions of a 100-fs laser that are due to third-order nonlinear effects have been compensated for. This technique, which permits correction i...

A Single-Shot-Autocorrelator with 60-dB Dynamic Range

The development of single-shot, high-dynamic-range temporal measurement devices has become necessary for characterizing high-energy petawatt laser pulses. Because of the low repetition rate of such systems, no device offers high-dynamic-range measurements in a single-shot mode. In addition, investigating the unexpected temporal behavior of pulses amplified by new techniques such as analyzed in ...