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RESEARCH PRODUCT

<title>New PW stretcher-compressor design for PHELIX laser</title>

subject

description

With PHELIX (Petawatt High Energy Laser for heavy Ion EXperiments) a high energy/ultra-high intensity laser system is currently under construction at the GSI (Gesellschaft fur SchwerIonenforschung, Germany). In combination with the high current high energy ion accelerator facility this will provide worldwide unique experimental opportunities in the field of dense plasma physics and inertial fusion research. In the long pulse mode the laser system will provide laser pulses of up to 5 kJ in 1-10 ns pulses. In the high intensity mode pulse powers in excess of 1 PW will be achieved. For this the well known technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) will be implemented. A new CPA stretcher-compressor setup for the PHELIX laser was calculated and designed. A 4-pass single-grating stretcher and a 4-pass single-grating test compressor, both with a full transmission bandwidth of 16 nm, as well as the compact single-pass compressor for the final pulse compression will be presented. Spatial chirp and spectral phase aberrations of the stretcher were optimized. We discuss the dependence of critical alignment tolerances on the angle of incidence and show the effects on the temporal pulse shape.