S. Hädrich,
J. Rothhardt,
S. Demmler,
M. Tschernajew,
A. Hoffmann,
M. Krebs,
A. Liem,
O. d. Vries,
M. Plötner,
S. Fabian,
T. Schreiber,
J. Limpert,
and A. Tünnermann
Scalability of components for kW-level average power few-cycle lasers
Appl. Opt., 55 :1636 (March 2016)
Scalability of components for kW-level average power few-cycle lasers
Appl. Opt., 55 :1636 (March 2016)
Abstract:
In this paper, the average power scalability of components that can be used for intense few-cycle lasers based on nonlinear compression of modern femtosecond solid-state lasers is investigated. The key components of such a setup, namely, the gas-filled waveguides, laser windows, chirped mirrors for pulse compression and low dispersion mirrors for beam collimation, focusing, and beam steering are tested under high-average-power operation using a kilowatt cw laser. We demonstrate the long-term stable transmission of kW-level average power through a hollow capillary and a Kagome-type photonic crystal fiber. In addition, we show that sapphire substrates significantly improve the average power capability of metal-coated mirrors. Ultimately, ultrabroadband dielectric mirrors show negligible heating up to 1 kW of average power. In summary, a technology for scaling of few-cycle lasers up to 1 kW of average power and beyond is presented.