Speaker
Description
Next generation laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) will require TW-PW peak power laser drivers operating at multi-kHz repetition rates [1]. This translates to 10s -100s kW of average power – orders of magnitude beyond current state-of-the-art LWFA drivers based on Ti:sapphire CPA. It is recognized that one of the most promising pathways for achieving this level of laser-driver performance is coherently combined femtosecond fiber laser systems. Over last several years we have demonstrated key technological milestones to enable this approach: 85µm core chirally-coupled-core (3C) fibers and their potential for monolithic integration as a high-energy amplifier-array scaling platform, coherent pulse stacking amplification (CPSA) as a key enabler in ~100-times reduction of system size and complexity, full stored energy extraction at ~10mJ per amplification channel using this CPSA technique and 85µm 3C fibers, and simultaneous compatibility of time-domain (CPSA) and spatial-domain coherent combining at ~10mJ per channel.
Based on these advances we have recently built a 12-channel coherent beam combining (CBC) and CPSA system for reaching a 100-mJ combined pulse energy milestone, the energy range suitable for driving LWFA electron acceleration experiments. At this Workshop we will report on our ongoing power and energy scaling experiments with this system, which has already become the highest energy fiber laser CBC system demonstrated. Furthermore, we will report on our future pathway of demonstrating LWFA, which to achieve with this energy level requires ~30fs duration pulses. Presently, the system delivers ~300fs pulses, with the potential for reaching <100fs after optimization. To reach the required ~30fs we are developing a novel multi-pass cell (MPC) based post-compression technique, which is capable of being scaled to Joule level pulse energies, and which thus offers a pathway to the first fiber-driven LWFA electron acceleration experiments.
[1] “Rerport of the basic research needs workshop on laser technology,” https://science.osti.gov/- /media/ardap/pdf/2024/ Laser-Technology-Workshop-Report_20240105_final.pdf
| Working group | WG1 |
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