Beam smoothing based on prism pair for multistep pulse compressor in PW lasers

TL;DR

This paper investigates a prism pair-based beam smoothing technique for multistep pulse compressors in petawatt lasers, enhancing beam quality and safety in high-power laser systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel prism pair method for beam smoothing in MPCs, analyzing spatial and spectral properties to optimize high-power laser performance.

Findings

Prism pair effectively smooths laser beam profiles.

Shorter prism separation enhances smoothing efficiency.

Method improves output quality and safety of PW laser systems.

Abstract

Ultra-short ultra-intense laser provides unprecedented experimental tools and extreme physical conditions to explore frontier secrets of nature. Recently, multistep pulse compressor (MPC) was proposed to break through the limitation of the size and damage threshold of the grating in the compressor during the realization of higher peak power laser. In the MPC methods, beam smoothing in the pre-compressor is a very important process. Here, beam smoothing based on prism pair were studied technically, in which both the spatial profiles and the spectral dispersive properties were analyzed in detail. The simulation results show clearly that the prism pair can effectively smooth the laser beam. Furthermore, the beam smoothing is much more efficiency with shorter separated distance if two prism pairs are arranged to induce spatial dispersion at one direction or two directions. The results of beam smoothing here will help the optimized optical designs in all PW laser systems to improve their output and running safety.