Demonstration of a compact 100 Hz, 0.1 J, diode-pumped picosecond laser

Abstract

In this work I present an all laser diode pumped chirped pulse amplification laser system that is capable of producing 100 mJ laser pulses at 100 Hz repetition rate with durations of under 5 ps. The primary focus of this work consists of the development of two amplification stages that boost the temporally stretched pulses from a few hundred picoJoules to more than 100 mJ. The first amplifier is a Yb:YAG based regenerative amplifier operated at room temperature, which amplifies the pulses by a factor of about 106. The second stage is a multi-pass, Yb:YAG based amplifier, which is operated at cryogenic temperatures, and further amplifies the pulses by a factor of about 100. This is the first time a combination of room temperature and cryogenically cooled Yb:YAG amplifiers has been demonstrated. The room temperature pre-amplifier maintains more bandwidth than in the cryogenic case for increased compressibility. The cryogenic cooling of the power amplifier allows for increased heat dissipation and decreased saturation intensity for efficient operation. The optical efficiency of this amplifier is higher than that of other diode-pumped systems of comparable energy.