Search

An upgraded version of the water-jet plasma X-ray source suitable for handling the 100 W power of the driving 1 kHz optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) L1 Allegra laser system has been installed and commissioned at ELI Beamlines. Hard X-ray generation with the L1 Allegra laser is demonstrated for the first time., ELI Beamlines is a rapidly progressing pillar of the pan-European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project focusing on the development and deployment of science driven by high-power lasers for user operations. This work reports the results of a commissioning run of a water-jet plasma X-ray source driven by the L1 Allegra laser, outlining the current capabilities and future potential of the system. The L1 Allegra is one of the lasers developed in-house at ELI Beamlines, designed to be able to reach a pulse energy of 100 mJ at a 1 kHz repetition rate with excellent beam properties. The water-jet plasma X-ray source driven by this laser opens opportunities for new pump–probe experiments with sub-picosecond temporal resolution and inherent synchronization between pump and probe pulses.

We report on a 1 kHz, 515 nm laser system, based on a commercially available 230 W average power Yb:YAG thin-disk regenerative amplifier, developed for pumping one of the last optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) stages of the Allegra laser system at ELI Beamlines. To avoid problems with self-focusing of picosecond pulses, the 1030 nm output pulses are compressed and frequency doubled with an LBO crystal in vacuum. Additionally, development of a thermal management system was needed to ensure stable phase matching conditions at high average power. The resulting 515 nm pulses have an energy of more than 120 mJ with SHG efficiency of 60% and an average RMS stability of 1.1% for more than 8 h.

The L1 Allegra is an OPCPA-based, high average power, high repetition rate laser system pumped by thin-disc based regenerative amplifiers currently under development at the ELI-Beamlines center in Czech Republic. The repetition rate is 1 kHz, pulse duration is below 15 fs and the wavelength centered around 820 nm with a maximum design pulse energy of 100 mJ. To avoid problems with self-focusing, a large portion of the system was placed inside vacuum, including the compressors and second-harmonic crystals for the last three 1030 nm pump lasers, the final three OPA stages, and the chirped mirror compressor. In order to reach the designed output energy of the whole system, the pump lasers need to be efficient, stable, and providing enough pump power for each of the amplification stages. Pulse compression of the final three pump lasers as well as efficient conversion to the second harmonic frequency in vacuum has posed several challenges and we report on their solutions and results. The vacuum environment causes difficulties for two main reasons. The first one is laser-induced-contamination (LIC) degrading the optical surfaces of dielectric gratings, mirrors and crystals, due to the presence of degassing components contaminating the vacuum chambers. The second reason is second-harmonic generation crystal mounts heating up, requiring regular phase matching corrections by rotation of the crystal mounts. The LIC problem was solved by regular cleaning of the chambers by means of an RF-plasma source, and the heating problem was solved by implementing active temperature stabilization by means of installing thermo-electric coolers on the crystal holders. To increase the efficiency of the second-harmonic generation, beam profiles of the pump lasers had to be improved. The original Faraday rotators, present in the linearly-designed regenerative amplifiers, caused non-Gaussian beam profiles due to the self focusing inside the rotators. By using KTF crystals inside a new type of rotators, the spatial profile of the pump lasers is more Gaussian, allowing the efficiency of the SHG to be higher, almost by 25%. All the solved problems recently allowed the system to reach a short pulse output energy of 56 mJ, paving a way to reach 100 mJ successfuly in the future.

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 results of the recent experiments of the XUV ELIps reflection and ellipsometry station at ELI Beamlines. Using the High Harmonic Generation source and a 1 kHz in-house developed laser, experiments in known samples such as GaN, STO and SiC were done and will be discussed.

In this paper, the authors present the characterization experiments of a 20 fs vacuum ultraviolet beam from a high harmonic generation source. The beam hits a silicon sample and passes a triple reflection gold polarizer located inside an ultrahigh vacuum chamber. The polarizer’s Malus curve was obtained; the total acquisition time for each point of the curve was 30 s. This aims to be the first vacuum ultraviolet time-resolved user station dedicated to ellipsometry. The high harmonic beam is generated by a 12 mJ, 1 kHz, 20 fs, in-house-developed laser and detected by a back-illuminated charge-coupled device.In this paper, the authors present the characterization experiments of a 20 fs vacuum ultraviolet beam from a high harmonic generation source. The beam hits a silicon sample and passes a triple reflection gold polarizer located inside an ultrahigh vacuum chamber. The polarizer’s Malus curve was obtained; the total acquisition time for each point of the curve was 30 s. This aims to be the first vacuum ultraviolet time-resolved user station dedicated to ellipsometry. The high harmonic beam is generated by a 12 mJ, 1 kHz, 20 fs, in-house-developed laser and detected by a back-illuminated charge-coupled device.

We report on the current state of readiness of the 1 kHz, 15 fs L1 ALLEGRA laser system for long term reliable operation driving user experiments based on HHG. The highly automated system, based on short pulse OPCPA, currently generates pulses with energy of 30 mJ at central wavelength of 820 nm.

We present experimental setup for user-oriented high-harmonic source with a description of different focusing and interaction geometries. Infrared rejection system and resulting extreme ultraviolet beam characterization are also described. Beamline is designed to be driven with 100 mJ

Three main paths are being developed within the ELI research program for transforming driving laser pulses into bursts of bright short wavelength radiation: high-order harmonic generation in gases, plasma X-ray sources and sources based on relativistic electron beams accelerated in laser plasma. For each of these research areas, dedicated beamlines are built to provide a unique combination of X-ray sources to the scientific community. The application of these beamlines has a well-defined balance between fundamental science and applications in different fields of science and technology. Here we summarize the current status of those user beamlines and we introduce new diagnostics devices developed within the implementation phase of the project, namely compact XUV spectrometer and beam profiler that is using only one fixed detector and an imaging Michelson interferometer with increased sensitivity for low density gas jet characterization.

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).

The Allegra femtosecond laser system is the main driver for high harmonic and plasma x-ray secondary sources at ELI-Beamlines operating at a 1 kHz rep rate. The system is based on OPCPA technology and consists of seven amplification stages pumped by thin-disk picosecond lasers. It is designed to reach 30 mJ output in the first phase of operation and to be ramped up to 50 mJ by engaging an additional pump laser. The amplified pulse is compressed to sub-20fs by an array of chirped mirrors and higher order dispersion is pre-compensated for by a Dazzler AOPDF in the front-end. In this paper we present the overview of Allegra system and the current status of deployment with a special focus on the high average power OPCPA in vacuum.

A passive peak intensity stabilization method based on optimal combination of Kerr nonlinearity and linear dispersion is presented. By analyzing the Kerr nonlinearity with a 3D numerical model it was found that if a Gaussian laser pulse acquires a certain amount of nonlinear phase and is consequently over-compressed to have sight negative chirp, the uctuations in peak intensity caused by energy uctuations are reduced. Thus, even if the energy of laser pulses uctuates the peak intensity can be stabilized. The simulations for realistic pulse parameters show an increase in peak intensity stability by well-over an order of magnitude. We demonstrate this process experimentally using a thin disk pump laser at ELI{Beamlines

We report on the status of the re-commissioning of a high energy OPCPA laser system with programmable spectrum that serves as a frontend for a 10 PW laser at ELI-Beamlines. The OPCPA chain was developed by a consortium of National Energetics and Ekspla along with scientists of ELI-Beamlines.1 The laser system, consisting of three picosecond OPCPA stages, pulse cleaner, Offner stretcher, and 5 nanosecond OPCPA stages pumped by Nd:YAG lasers with programmable pulse shape (NL944, Ekspla), allows for precise spectral shaping while achieving high nonlinear conversion efficiency. Employing a subsequent Nd:glass power amplifiers (PA), the system was demonstrated to yield>1 kJ of energy, while maintaining broad spectrum of > 13 nm (FWHM). After recommissioning the OPCPA frontend in Dolni Břežany, an output energy of 4.3 J, flat beam-profile and good far-field quality has been demonstrated. The spectral shape has been optimized to support > 15 nm bandwidth and >1.5 kJ, consistent with 10 PW operation of the fully integrated laser system after compression.

State-of-the-art physics experiments are pushing the development of lasers with ultra-high peak power pulses. 4 PW pulses have been produced with TiSa [1] and 10 PW with the same gain medium is scheduled at LULI (Apollon) and at ELI-NP. The other approach is to use Nd-doped glass as gain medium, whose interest is in its capability of delivering higher energy at the expense of a longer pulse duration. Based on this gain material combined with an OPCPA based front-end, a kJ-10 PW class laser has been designed and built. The front-end, consisting of picosecond OPCPA, temporal pulse cleaning and nanosecond OPCPA, delivers pulses with excess of 4 Joules at 5 Hz with a shaped spectrum to pre-compensate for gain distortions in Nd:glass power amplifiers. Two liquid-cooled, mixed glass power amplifiers, namely PA1 and PA2, are used for further amplification. Up to now, they have been activated demonstrating 70 J at 1 shot a minute after PA1 and 1 kJ at 1 shot every 7 minutes for PA2. The Fourier limit of the spectrum is 150 fs meaning 6 PW capability after compression. This energy level has been obtained with only 3 Joules seed energy, from the OPCPA and partial activation of PA2. Scaling of this result suggests that more than 1.7 kJ should be obtained leading to 10 PW after compression while the output spectrum will remain compatible with 150 Fs thanks to the OPCPA spectral tailoring capability.

We report on the status of the Allegra laser beamline, which is designed to provide ub-20 fs pulses with tens of mJ of energy with exceptionally high contrast at a 1 kHz repetition rate.

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.

We present a broadband optical parametric chirped pulse amplification (OPCPA) system delivering 4 J pulses at a repetition rate of 5 Hz. It will serve as a frontend for the 1.5 kJ

For most extreme light applications, a reliable and stable driver laser is crucial to successful experiments. As lasers grow in energy and peak power they become increasingly complex and more failure modes are introduced to the system as a whole. For this reason it is prudent to develop a laser with simplicity, repeatability, and durability in mind. With the wide commercial availability of high quality, inexpensive fiber components, much of the required pulse conditioning for seeding high energy laser systems can take place entirely in fiber. This allows for much of the laser front end to be compact, alignment-free, and computer controlled with potentially dramatic savings in cost and space on the optical table. Here we explore some of the current trends in fiberbased front ends for high peak power laser systems. The requirements for any given high peak power laser are always quite different and fiber front ends are enormously customizable, so here we present two basic versions of fiber front ends which are used at the ELI-Beamlines facility which resemble other common fiber front end architectures.

The 10PW OPCPA/glass laser under construction for ELI-Beamlines will exhibit output pulses delivered every minute with an energy of 1.5kJ within 150fs duration. We will show results of the sub-sections as well as output performances.

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 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 investigated thermal-lensing effects in a diode end-pumped Yb:KGW laser with slab shaped active element. Performance and thermal lensing properties for Ng cut Yb:KGW and Yb:KGW cut for athermal propagation direction are presented. It is found that crystal cut along athermal direction provides weaker thermal lens than Ng cut active element, however, due to anisotropic Yb:KGW characteristics, thermal lens is highly astigmatic. End bulging contribution to thermal lensing under intense pump was measured (for Ng cut active element). Keywords: Yb:KGW, thermal lens, diode-pumped, athermal orientation

We report the high beam quality diode end-pumped Q-switched Yb:YAG laser operating at 1030 nm wavelength with elliptical cavity mode conguration operating at 1n100 kHz repetition rates. We have performed measurements of highly astigmatic thermal lens in laser active element by means of ShacknHartmann wavefront sensor that provides necessary data for laser cavity design. With optimized laser cavity the output beam quality parameter M 2 does not exceed 1.2 value even at maximum pump power of 50 W.

The ELI-Beamlines facility, currently under construction in Prague, Czech Republic, will house multiple high power laser systems with varying pulse energies, pulse durations, and repetition rates. Here we present the status of a high repetition rate beamline currently under construction with target parameters of 20 fs pulse duration, 100 mJ pulse energy, and 1 kHz repetition rate. Specifically we present the Yb:YAG thin disk lasers which are intended to pump picosecond OPCPA, synchronization between pump and signal pulses in the OPCPA, and the first stages of OPCPA.

We present the results of performance modeling of a diode-pumped solid-state HiLASE laser designed for use in inertial fusion energy power plants. The main amplifier concept is based on a He-gas-cooled multi-slab architecture similar to that employed in Mercury laser system. Our modeling quantifies the reduction of thermally induced phase aberrations and average depolarization in ${\mathrm{Yb}}^{{3+}}$ :YAG slabs by a combination of helium cryogenic cooling and properly designed (doping/width) cladding materials.

We report on a temporal jitter-compensated Yb:YAG thin-disc laser as a pump source for the front-end OPCPA of ELIBeamlines high energy and repetition rate system. The main advantage of using picosecond Yb:YAG thin-disc lasers is that relatively high energies in the kHz repetition rate range can be easily accessed. Although in our case the pump laser is optically synchronized to the OPCPA seeding Ti:Sapph laser, the stability of the OPCPA output gets heavily affected by delay jitter due to a large number of roundtrips in the regenerative amplifier cavity and slight ambient temperature drifts. Since interacting pulses are only ~1.5 ps in duration, an additional active stabilization of the pump path length corresponding to sub-100 fs delay precision must be implemented. In our work we demonstrate a novel design of a jitter stabilization system which employs a cross-correlation setup employing parametric amplification in two perpendicularly oriented nonlinear crystals. A small fraction of the OPCPA seed signal is being locked between cross-polarized and delayed replicas of a pump pulse. The feedback signal for the delay compensation is acquired by coupling the polarization-separated parts of the parametrically amplified signal into two channels of a balanced photodetector. The delay stabilization is achieved mainly by adjusting the cavity length of the regenerative amplifier with a piezo-mounted mirror. The proposed setup allows reducing the temporal jitter of Yb:YAG thin-disc regenerative amplifier to tens of fs RMS and maintaining it over extended periods of time.

A novel frequency synthesis scheme and feed-forward approach is applied directly for stabilization of a sub-MHz frequency comb from a Yb:KGW CPA laser not only reduces the phase noise but also greatly simplifies the stabilization setup.

We present a compact TW-class continuum seeded multistage OPCPA system operated at 800 nm and pumped by femtosecond and picosecond pulses. 35 mJ pulse energies and compression to 9 fs are demonstarated.

A number of methods for the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) measurement employing a temporal or spectral domain interferometry and stabilization via feedback controlled modulation of the pump power have been developed in recent years. Locking of the carrier-envelope phase offset in mode-locked Ti:Sapph oscillators using feedback schemes has been demonstrated more than a decade ago [1,2], however the CEP-locked solid-state oscillators based on the ytterbium doped active elements appeared much later [3,4]. The results on an optimized CEP stabilization of the all-solid-state Yb:KGW laser system based on the Kerr lens mode-locking oscillator and regenerative chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) operating at repetition rates up to 1 MHz as well as different OPA setups pumped by second harmonic of this laser are presented. The oscillator has been phase-locked to sub-100 mrad values. The CEP drift of the whole CPA system was compensated down to 130 mrad (see Fig. 1 (a)) by implementing additional slow feedback loop to the oscillator pump. To our knowledge, it is the best result for ytterbium based amplifier systems. The CEP-stable laser pulses were used to pump the BBO-based OPA and produce the seed for it through continuum generation. The phase perturbations arising in this OPA were compensated to large extent by measuring the CEP at the output of the OPA and sending the feedback signal to the pump diodes of the oscillator. In this case the phase noise of 220 mrad has been measured (Fig. 1 (b)). This CEP stabilization approach is expected to be promising for the minimizing of the phase drift in CEP-stable multistage high energy OPCPA systems. The passive OPA idler pulse CEP stabilization has been performed in case of seeding the OPA with continuum generated by the laser second harmonic. The phase variation due to the changes in environment conditions was minimized by the implementation of the slow feedback loop to control the temporal delay between the pump and seed pulses. As a result, the long-term CEP-stable OPA operation with phase error as low as 70 mrad over 6 hours was demonstrated.

Here we demonstrate a direct method to stabilize the CEP of an Yb:KGW MOP A laser system, resulting in sub-100 mrad stability. To the best of our knowledge, this value surpasses most previously measured CEP jitter for Ti:sapphire CPA systems as well as any previous attempt to stabilize Yb-based oscillator and amplifier systems. This is a crucial step in widening the utility of amplifier femtosecond Yb sources, which are easily scalable in average power and pulse energy but could not be meaningfully employed in attosecond optics until now, given the difficulty of their CEP control.

We report on high beam quality diode end-pumped Q-switched Yb:YAG laser with elliptical cavity mode configuration operating at 1÷100 kHz repetition rates. Laser coupler transmittance optimization in CW is carried out. Measurements of thermal lens in laser active element by means of Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor are presented. It is shown that thermal lens in such laser is highly astigmatic. We have also measured laser beam quality parameter M 2 , which does not exceed 1.2 value at the highest pump power.

We present a compact TW-class OPCPA system operating at 800 nm. Broadband seed pulses are generated and pre-amplified to 25 μJ in a white light continuum seeded femtosecond NOPA. Amplification of the seed pulses to 35 mJ at a repetition rate of 10 Hz and compression to 9 fs is demonstrated.