A Compact 355tw Femtosecod Ti: Sapphire Laser Facility And Trend To High Contrast Ratio

A Ti: sapphire laser facility is established based on the chirped pulse amplification technology. For the first time we generate laser peak power of multi-100TW with three stages of amplifiers. In the final amplifier a 100J frequency-doubled Nd: glass laser is used as the pump source. To suppress the parasitic lasing (PL), we design the Ti: sapphire crystal with V groove cutting shape and use polymer thermoplastic cladding to absorb the reflection at the Ti: sapphhire interface. With the optimized alignment under 60J pump energy, laser peak power of 355TW is obtained at 31fs average pulse duration. The repetition rate is about 20min between two shots. Although the multi-100TW laser will enable us to open new applications on ultra-intense physics, the contrast ratio play more important role for the laser-matter interaction. To pursue a higher contrast ratio, new design on doubled CPA and ring regenerative amplifier are introduced. By further improving the amplification efficiency, our analysis shows that it should be possible to obtain peak power of high than 500TW with contrast ratio of about 10(10).