Abstract

We describe a method that can be used for the coherent addition of laser pulses. As different laser pulses are initially generated in a laser-pulse compressor equipped with a tiled grating, such a coherent addition is indispens able in order to maximize the intensity in the laser far field. We present measurements in this context where, up to now, an unavoidable difference in the grating constants between the phased gratings reduced the maximum achievable intensity. The method significantly facilitates the high-precision alignment of a tiled grating compressor and could also be used for a coherent addition of laser pulses.

© 2010 Optical Society of America

Demonstration of large-aperture tiled-grating compressors for high-energy, petawatt-class, chirped-pulse amplification systems

J. Qiao, A. Kalb, T. Nguyen, J. Bunkenburg, D. Canning, and J. H. Kelly
Opt. Lett. 33(15) 1684-1686 (2008)

Alignment of a tiled-grating compressor in a high-power chirped-pulse amplification laser system

Marco Hornung, Ragnar Bödefeld, Mathias Siebold, Matthias Schnepp, Joachim Hein, Roland Sauerbrey, and Malte C. Kaluza
Appl. Opt. 46(30) 7432-7435 (2007)

Tiled-grating compression of multiterawatt laser pulses

Arnaud Cotel, Caroline Crotti, Patrick Audebert, Catherine Le Bris, and Catherine Le Blanc
Opt. Lett. 32(12) 1749-1751 (2007)

Phase-locked control of tiled-grating assemblies for chirped-pulse-amplified lasers using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer

J. Bunkenburg, T. J. Kessler, W. Skulski, and H. Huang
Opt. Lett. 31(10) 1561-1563 (2006)

Tiled-grating compressor with uncompensated dispersion for near-field-intensity smoothing

H. Huang and Terrance Kessler
Opt. Lett. 32(13) 1854-1856 (2007)