Broadband high energy diode pumped Yb:KYW multipass amplifier

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos (1, 2) , Alain Pellegrina (2, 1) , Patricia Ramirez (2) , Patrick Georges (2) , Frédéric Druon (2)

1 ILE - Institut de la Lumiére Extrême
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Lasers

We report a diode pumped Yb:KYW amplifier delivering up to 27 mJ pulses at a repetition rate of 100 Hz and a spectral bandwidth of 5.5 nm, centered at around 1030 nm. The system is based on a double-head multipass amplifier configuration where the pump thermal load is distributed over two relatively thin laser crystals which permits a sufficiently large number of passes with minimal passive losses thus maximizing the energy extraction efficiency. The amplified pulse bandwidth theoretically supports 340 fs pulses and as a demonstration, a small fraction of the amplified pulses has been compressed to 560 fs.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Dimitris N. Papadopoulos, Alain Pellegrina, Patricia Ramirez, Patrick Georges, Frédéric Druon. Broadband high energy diode pumped Yb:KYW multipass amplifier. Optics Letters, 2011, 36 (19), pp.3816-3818. ⟨hal-00621039⟩