Compact chirp-free ps-pulse wedged thin-disk amplifier

Abstract

Amplifying ps-laser radiation to high pulse-energies as well as a high average output power is a challenging task. In the past it was shown that thin-disk multipass amplifiers can achieve excellent properties for ultrashort laser pulses at over 1 kW of average power. Furthermore, systems combining multipass and regenerative thin-disk amplifiers achieved 700 mJ of pulse energy at a repetition rate of 1000 Hz. These systems reaching such excellent properties are complex, extensive and typically need dozens of mirror-optics and the corresponding space associated with those. With the introduction of our monolithic wedged thin-disk (WTD) concept we were able to demonstrate small signal laser amplification of up to 10 (+10 dB) for cw-systems with a drastically reduced amount of mirror optics as well as space needed. By adding a redirecting mirror to introduce two multipasses in the WTD we were able to amplify a 2 ps-laser source with a small signal gain of up to 55 (+17 dB) and at 20 W seed power by a factor of 5 (+7 dB) reaching up to 100 W of output power.