A novel small-scale self-focusing suppression method for ultrahigh peak power lasers

TL;DR

This paper introduces an asymmetric four grating compressor (AFGC) to improve laser beam uniformity and suppress small-scale self-focusing during post-compression, enabling shorter pulses and higher power lasers.

Contribution

The novel AFGC method enhances spatial uniformity and suppresses SSSF in ultrahigh peak power laser post-compression, facilitating scaling to petawatt and ten-petawatt lasers.

Findings

Shortened laser pulses from 30fs to sub-10fs with AFGC

Efficient suppression of small-scale self-focusing

Potential for scaling to 10PW lasers

Abstract

We proposed a novel method, using an asymmetric four grating compressor (AFGC) to improve the spatial uniformity of laser beams, to suppress the small-scale self-focusing (SSSF) during the post-compression of ultrahigh peak power lasers. The spatial uniformity is an important factor in performing post-compression, due to the spatial intensity nonuniformity will be enhanced while going through a nonlinear process. And what's more, the strong intensity spikes induced during nonlinear process can seriously damage the subsequent optical components. Moreover, the three-dimensional numerical simulations of the post-compression are implemented based on a petawatt (PW) class laser with a standard compressor and an AFGC. The results show that the post-compression with AFGC can shorten the laser pulses from 30fs to sub-10fs and meanwhile efficiently suppress SSSF. This work provides a promising scheme for the post-compression scaling to PW and even 10PW lasers.