The Production of Petawatt Laser Pulses

Abstract

Chirped-pulse amplification applied to broad-bandwidth solid-state lasers has created a revolution in the production and use of terawatt and now petawatt class lasers.^1,2 The concepts and technology contributing to this revolution have evolved continuously since the early 1970’s. Following the grating compressor work of Treacy³, Bischell⁴ and others described the application of chirped-pulse amplification to Nd:Glass lasers. This was followed by a large amount of work on fiber-grating pulse compression for communication research.⁵ In 1985, Strickland and Mourou combined many of these ideas into the first practical demonstration of chirped-pulse amplification with a solid-state laser.⁶ Following this initial demonstration, rapid developments in technology such as the stretcher design of Martinez⁷ led to small scale systems capable of terawatt⁸ and multiterawatt pulses.^9–11 Occurring in parallel with the development of chirped-pulse amplification technology using Nd:Glass lasers, was the development of the new laser material, titanium-doped sapphire. The commercial availability of this unique laser material dramatically propelled the revolution in CPA based solid-state lasers. An overwhelming majority of CPA lasers now employ Ti:sapphire either throughout the entire laser system or at least as the oscillator material.¹³ These early developments and the large amount of effort that has gone into the laser technology in recent years have culminated in high pulse energy systems producing pulses with a peak power of 125 TW¹⁴ and very short-pulse systems producing multiterawatt pulses which only contain a few optical cycles.^15–18 Here, we describe the limits of CPA technology in the context of a large scale system producing pulses with a peak power exceeding 1.25 petawatts (1250 TW).