Contrast degradation in a chirped-pulse amplifier due to generation of prepulses by postpulses
2008; Optica Publishing Group; Volume: 16; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1364/oe.16.003178
ISSN1094-4087
AutoresN.V. Didenko, A. V. Konyashchenko, A. P. Lutsenko, S Yu Tenyakov,
Tópico(s)Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics
ResumoExperiment and modeling show that the refractive index nonlinearity can significantly degrade the contrast of a chirped-pulse amplifier seeded with a pulse and a single postpulse. Multiple powerful non-equidistant pre- and postpulses are generated. For a Gaussian pulse and a hat-top beam, an incident postpulse of energy W results in a prepulse of energy 0.58B(2)W, where B is the nonlinear phase (B-integral) of the main pulse. Calculations show that level of satellites due to gain saturation is negligibly small. Experimental results for Ti:Sapphire regenerative and multipass amplifiers and prepulse generation in fused silica agree well with the theory.
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