Ma Jingui, Xiong Kainan, Yuan Peng, Tu Xiaoniu, Wang Jing, Xie Guoqiang, Zheng Yanqing, Qian Liejia
Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (MOE), Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China.
Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201800, China.
Light Sci Appl. 2022 Sep 13;11(1):269. doi: 10.1038/s41377-022-00967-6.
Full pump depletion corresponds to the upper limit of the generated signal photons relative to the pump pulse; this allows the highest peak power to be produced in a unit area of ultraintense laser amplifiers. In practical systems based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, however, the typical pump depletion is only ~35%. Here, we report quasi-parametric chirped-pulse amplification (QPCPA) with a specially designed 8-cm-thick Sm:YCOB crystal that highly dissipates the idler and hence improves pump depletion. We demonstrate 56% QPCPA energy efficiency for an 810-nm signal converted from a 532-nm pump, or equivalently 85% pump depletion. As another advantage, such a record high depletion greatly suppresses the parametric superfluorescence noise in QPCPA to only ~1.5 × 10 relative to the amplified signal energy. These results pave the way to beyond the ten-petawatt peak power of the currently most intense lasers.
完全泵浦耗尽对应于相对于泵浦脉冲产生的信号光子的上限；这使得在超强激光放大器的单位面积内能够产生最高的峰值功率。然而，在基于光参量啁啾脉冲放大的实际系统中，典型的泵浦耗尽仅约为35%。在此，我们报道了一种采用特殊设计的8厘米厚的钐掺杂钇钙硼氧晶体（Sm:YCOB）的准参量啁啾脉冲放大（QPCPA），该晶体能够高效耗散闲频光，从而提高泵浦耗尽。我们展示了从532纳米泵浦转换而来的810纳米信号的QPCPA能量效率为56%，或者等效地，泵浦耗尽为85%。作为另一个优点，如此创纪录的高耗尽将QPCPA中的参量超荧光噪声相对于放大信号能量极大地抑制到仅约1.5×10。这些结果为超越目前最强激光的十拍瓦峰值功率铺平了道路。
