Ultrafast Operation of High-Average-Power, High-Energy Thulium Lasers

Project Overview

The development of efficient, high energy, high-repetition rate lasers is of great interest for many applications ranging from fundamental high energy density science to industrial applications including powering the next generation of compact particle accelerators, secondary sources of short wavelength radiation, materials processing, and printing future generations of integrated circuits. Many of these applications also require high peak power, necessitating the development of short pulse duration technologies that support high energy and high average power. Thulium-doped yttrium lithium fluoride (Tm:YLF) is a laser material that is uniquely well-suited for enabling the next generation, efficient high peak and average power laser drivers.

As part of this project, we developed the necessary optical technologies to demonstrate high peak power operation of a Tm:YLF-based laser for the first time. This included the conceptual design and development of a prototype broad bandwidth laser frontend operating at the ~1900nm wavelength, the development of high damage threshold and high average power-capable multilayer dielectric gratings supporting compression of joule-level pulses in this wavelength range for the first time, and the development of a Joule-level amplifier employing diode-pumped Tm:YLF for amplifying stretched broad bandwidth pulses.

This work culminated in the demonstration of high energy chirped pulse amplification in a Tm:YLF-based amplifier and subsequent temporal compression of these pulses for the first time. Joule-level pulses were compressed to sub-400fs pulse durations, a record pulse energy for lasers operating in the near 2000nm wavelength range.

Mission Impact

This work advances Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Core Competency in Lasers and Optical Sciences and Technology and the core capability of the NIF&PS directorate: Laser Science and Systems Engineering. Additionally, this project directly addresses the R&D priority of maintaining leadership in the field of high energy, high average power laser technology.

Publications, Presentations, and Patents

Reagan, Brendan A., Thomas Galvin, Issa Tamer, Emily Sistrunk, Thomas Spinka, and Craig W. Siders, "Solid State 2 μm Laser Drivers for EUV Lithography." Photon Sources for Lithography and Metrology (2023).

Kiani, Leily, Tong Zhou, Seung-Whan Bahk, Jake Bromage, David Bruhwiler, E. Michael Campbell, Zenghu Chang et al. "High average power ultrafast laser technologies for driving future advanced accelerators." Journal of Instrumentation 18, no. 08 (2023): T08006.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Thomas Galvin, Frantisek Batysta, Leily Kiani, Emily Sistrunk, Drew Willard et al. "100J-Level Energy Extraction in a Compact, Diode-Pumped Tm: YLF Amplifier." CLEO: Science and Innovations, pp. SF1N-3. Optica Publishing Group, 2023.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Frantisek Batysta, Leily Kiani, Zbynek Hubka, Thomas Galvin, Emily Sistrunk et al. "High energy operation of a diode-pumped Tm: YLF laser." High Power Lasers for Fusion Research VII, vol. 12401, pp. 61-63. SPIE, 2023.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Thomas Galvin, František Batysta, Emily Sistrunk, Drew Willard, Andrew Church et al. "1 GW peak power and 100 J pulsed operation of a diode-pumped Tm: YLF laser." Optics Express 30, no. 26 (2022): 46336-46343.

Zhang, Simin, Michael V. Tripepi, Brendan A. Reagan, Emily Sistrunk Link, Hoang T. Nguyen, David A. Alessi, and Enam A. Chowdhury. "Mid-IR femtosecond laser induced damage precursor on multi-layer dielectric mirrors and gratings." Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials 2022. SPIE, 2022.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Thomas Galvin, Justin Galbraith, Emily Sistrunk, Andrew Church, Glenn Huete, Hansel Neurath, Drew Willard, and Thomas Spinka. "High Energy Diode-Pumped Tm: YLF Amplifier." 2022 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), pp. 1-2. IEEE, 2022.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Thomas Galvin, Justin Galbraith, Emily Sistrunk, Andrew Church, Glenn Huete, Hansel Neurath, Drew Willard, and Thomas Spinka. "High Energy Extraction from Diode-Pumped Tm: YLF." High Intensity Lasers and High Field Phenomena, pp. HW4B-7. Optica Publishing Group, 2022.

Tamer, Issa, Brendan A. Reagan, Thomas Galvin, Justin D. Galbraith, Emily Link, Andrew Church, Glenn Huete, Hansel Neurath, Drew Willard, and Thomas Spinka. "Multi-joule energy extraction in diode-pumped Tm: YLF."  Solid State Lasers XXXI: Technology and Devices, vol. 11980, pp. 18-21. SPIE, 2022.

Zhang, Simin, Michael Tripepi, Abdallah AlShafey, Noah Talisa, Hoang T. Nguyen, Brendan A. Reagan, Emily Sistrunk, David J. Gibson, David A. Alessi, and Enam A. Chowdhury. "Femtosecond damage experiments and modeling of broadband mid-infrared dielectric diffraction gratings." Optics Express 29, no. 24 (2021): 39983-39999.