Abstract

High-energy petawatt lasers require large diffraction gratings for pulse compression. As an alternative to meter-sized gratings, we demonstrate the capability of a tiled-grating system to compress multiterawatt subpicosecond laser pulses. Using a $100\mathrm{TW}$-class Nd:glass chirped-pulse amplification laser facility, we report on the performance of a two-grating mosaic to compress high-energy pulses to $2.5\mathrm{J}$, $450\mathrm{fs}$ $\left(5.5\mathrm{TW}\right)$ in air with a beam size of $50\mathrm{mm}$ and energy transmission of 63%. Stability of the grating mosaic alignment was realized by use of an accurate nanopositioning optomechanical system. The output Gaussian spectrum was preserved from grating-gap spectral clipping and was free of modulation.

© 2007 Optical Society of America

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