Open AccessContrast degradation in a chirped-pulse amplifier due to generation of prepulses by postpulses
Author(s) -
Didenko Nv,
Konyashchenko Av,
A. P. Lutsenko,
S Yu Tenyakov
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.16.003178
Subject(s) - optics , amplifier , regenerative amplification , chirp , pulse (music) , chirped pulse amplification , femtosecond pulse shaping , materials science , ultrashort pulse , self phase modulation , bandwidth limited pulse , pulse compression , nonlinear optics , laser , physics , optical amplifier , optoelectronics , telecommunications , radar , cmos , detector , computer science
Experiment 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.