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Vacuum chambers are frequently used in high-energy, high-peak-power laser systems to prevent deleterious nonlinear effects, which can result from propagation in air. In the vacuum sections of the Allegra laser system at ELI-Beamlines, we observed degradation of several optical elements due to laser-induced contamination (LIC). This contamination is present on surfaces with laser intensity above 30 G W / c m 2 with wavelengths of 515, 800, and 1030 nm. It can lead to undesired absorption on diffraction gratings, mirrors, and crystals and ultimately to degradation of the laser beam profile. Because the Allegra laser is intended to be a high-uptime source for users, such progressive degradation is unacceptable for operation. Here, we evaluate three methods of removing LIC from optics in vacuum. One of them, the radio-frequency-generated plasma cleaning, appears to be a suitable solution from the perspective of operating a reliable, on-demand source for users.

We report on the status of the Allegra laser beamline currently being commissioned at the ELI-Beamlines facility. The beamline will be used to drive X-ray sources for research in material science, molecular physics, and biophysics, where a high repetition rate is essential. Designed for user operation, significant attention is given to stability, reliability, and automation of the system. A photo of the beamline is shown in Fig. 1(a).

We discuss the performance of several stages of high energy, high average power SHG and OPCPA with picosecond pulses in vacuum as part of the ALLEGRA laser at ELI-Beamlines.

Overview of progress in construction and testing of the laser systems of ELI-Beamlines, accomplished since 2015, is presented. Good progress has been achieved in construction of all four lasers based largely on the technology of diode-pumped solid state lasers (DPSSL). The first part of the L1 laser, designed to provide 200 mJ

We report on the status of the high repetition rate, high energy, L1 laser beamline at the ELI-Beamlines facility. The beamline is based on picosecond optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) of pulses from a mode-locked Ti:Sapphire oscillator and has a target energy/repetition rate of 100 mJ/1 kHz with < 15fs pulse duration. The OPCPA pump lasers use thin disk technology to achieve the high energy and average power required to pump such a high energy, high repetition rate broadband amplifier. Here we report on the progress in beamline development and discuss the technical challenges involved in producing such a system and their solutions. A major focus of the laser development is reliable, robust operation and long term stability; mechanical, optical, and control system architecture design considerations to achieve our goals of long term stability are discussed.

We present an active cavity pointing stabilization system based on a novel method that tracks the cavity mode position directly on the thin disk gain medium itself. Here, the overlap of the lasing cavity with the pump, visible as a depletion within the pumped area, is most crucial to the stability of the laser. Short term stability as well as long term stability are significantly increased enabling day long operation, directly from a cold start of the laser system, without the need for thermalization and manual alignment.

We present a stable supercontinuum (SC) generated in a bulk YAG crystal, pumped by 3 ps chirped pulses at 1030 nm. The SC is generated in a loose focus geometry in a 13 cm long YAG crystal, allowing for stable and robust single-filament generation. The SC energy stability exceeds that of the pump laser by almost a factor of 3. Additionally, we show that the SC spectrum has long-term stability and that the SC is coherent and compressible by compressing the portions of SC spectra close to the corresponding Fourier limit. This makes the picosecond-pulse-driven SC a suitable stable seed for OPCPA amplifiers.

We report on the design and performance of a fiber-based, multi-channel laser amplifier seed pulse distribution system. The device is designed to condition and distribute low energy laser pulses from a mode-locked oscillator to multiple, highly synchronized, high energy amplifiers integrated into a laser beamline. Critical functions such as temporal pulse stretching well beyond 100 ps/nm, pulse picking, and fine control over the pulse delay up to 300 ps are all performed in fiber eliminating the need for bulky and expensive grating stretchers, Pockels cells, and delay lines. These functions are characterized and the system as a whole is demonstrated by seeding two high energy amplifiers in the laser beamline. The design of this system allows for complete computer control of all functions, including tuning of dispersion, and is entirely hands-free. The performance of this device and its subsystems will be relevant to those developing lasers where reliability, size, and cost are key concerns in addition to performance; this includes those developing large-scale laser systems similar to ours and also those developing table-top experiments and commercial systems.

We report on a broadband OPCPA system, pumped at 515 nm by frequency doubled Yb:YAG thin disk lasers. The system delivers 11.3 mJ pulses at a central wavelength of 800 nm with a spatial beam quality of Msup2/sup= 1.25 and25% pump-to-signal conversion efficiency. The broadband pulses were demonstrated to be compressible to 12 fs using a chirped mirror compressor.

We report on a frequency-doubled picosecond Yb:YAG thin disk regenerative amplifier, developed as a pump laser for a kilohertz repetition rate OPCPA. At a repetition rate of 1 kHz, the compressed output of the regenerative amplifier has a pulse duration of 1.2 ps and pulse energy of 90 mJ with energy stability of σ < 0.8% and M2 < 1.2. The pulses are frequency doubled in an LBO crystal yielding 42 mJ at 515 nm.

In contrast to expectations, we observe that the photoionization time delay from the 1s2 spherically symmetric ground state of He depend on the electron emission direction with respect to an external reference. We attribute the observed anisotropy to the interplay between different final quantum states, which become accessible once two photons are involved in the photoionization process. This is a universal effect, which needs to be taken into account for any study dealing with photoionization dynamics.

We report on the first experiments characterizing the complete time-dependent 2D vector potential of a few-cycle laser pulse. The instantaneous amplitude and orientation of the electric field is determined with sub-cycle resolution, directly giving access to the polarization state of the pulse at any instant in time. This is achieved by performing an attosecond streaking experiment using a reaction microscope, where the full pulse characterization is performed directly in the target region.

Here we present a successful combination of an attosecond beamline with a COLTRIMS apparatus, which we refer to as AttoCOLTRIMS. The setup provides either single attosecond pulses or attosecond pulse trains for extreme ultraviolet-infrared pump-probe experiments. We achieve full attosecond stability by using an active interferometer stabilization. The capability of the setup is demonstrated by means of two measurements, which lie at the heart of the COLTRIMS detector: firstly, we resolve the rotating electric field vector of an elliptically polarized few-cycle infrared laser field by attosecond streaking exploiting the access to the 3D momentum space of the charged particles. Secondly, we show streaking measurements on different atomic species obtained simultaneously in a single measurement making use of the advantage of measuring ions and electrons in coincidence. Both of these studies demonstrate the potential of the AttoCOLTRIMS for attosecond science., Review of Scientific Instruments, 85 (10), ISSN:0034-6748, ISSN:1089-7623

We investigate experimentally the validity of proposed theories extending the tunneling approximation towards the multiphoton regime in strong-field ionization of helium. We employ elliptically polarized laser pulses and demonstrate how the influence of the ion potential on the released electron encoded in the measured observable provides the desired sensitivity to detect nonadiabatic effects in tunnel ionization. Our results show that for a large intensity range the proposed nonadiabatic theories contradict the experimental trends of the data, while adiabatic assumptions are confirmed.

We present a multistage 1 kHz OPCPA system, pumped by two frequency doubled thin disk regenerative amplifiers, delivering together 57 mJ at 515 nm. The OPCPA produces 8 mJ of amplified signal and is compressible to < 27 fs.