Design and performances of prototype laser amplifiers for technical-integration-line facility

We present work on the design and physical performances for a large-aperture multisegment amplifier, which is an engineering prototype amplifier for our technical-integration-line facility. The amplifier consists of 4×2 apertures with each clear aperture about 300×300 mm. Each amplifier module consists of eight laser slabs, arranged four high, two wide, and one long, and twenty high-pulse power flashlamps with an input electric energy of about 23 kJ per lamp. These twenty flashlamps are arranged in a 6-8-6 scheme. The central eight flashlamps will irradiate their energy to the laser slabs in two directions to increase the pumping transfer efficiency. Experimental results indicated that the energy stored in the upper laser level is about 0.24 J/cm 3 , which corresponds to an energy storage efficiency of about 3.0%. Finally, with an 1.053-μm laser probe we obtained a small-signal gain coefficient of 5.0% cm –1 .