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Multi-Terawatt, 50 Femtosecond Laser for Laser Accelerator--Positive Light, 101 Cooper Court, Los Gatos, CA 95030; 408-399-7744
Mr. Rimas Viselga, Principal Investigator
Mr. Jeremy Weston, Business Official
DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-99ER82860
Amount: $99,892
The Department of Energy has identified a need for terawatt-class laser systems for advanced laser-driven particle acceleration applications. Specifically, multi-terawatt systems are sought that are capable of providing 1 J, 50 femtosecond (fs) single wavelength pulses or, alternately, 60 J, 4 ps pulses in dual frequency operation. This project will develop a compact terawatt chirped pulse amplifier laser system using Ti:sapphire as the gain medium to achieve short pulse widths. By combining a sub-50 fs regenerative amplifier with novel, image-relayed multi-pass amplifiers, this system will offer the potential for generating 1 J, 50 fs pulses. Adaptation of a novel spectral filtering technique currently being developed will also offer the potential for simultaneous dual frequency amplification. The Phase I project will define the design of a 1 J/pulse, 50 fs amplifier system. This system will integrate a high energy, flash-lamp-pumped Nd:glass laser system as the pumping source for two novel, image-relayed, multi-pass Ti:sapphire amplifier stages. Modeling and experimental characterization of the gain and gain narrowing in a 9.5 mm diameter multi-pass amplifier will be used to demonstrate the feasibility of scaling to 1 J, 50 fs system to be built in Phase II.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The availability of compact, relatively affordable laser-driven particle accelerators should open the door to a variety of new medical, scientific and industrial applications based on synchrotron optical sources and free-electron lasers.