JETI40 Laser

JETI – Jena Titanium:sapphire 40 terawatts laser system

JETI40 is a semicommercial high-intensity laser system capable of providing pulse peak powers of up to 40 TW for experimental studies.

Pulses are being generated by a femtosecond oscillator, and are amplified in multiple amplifiers via chirped pulse amplification (CPA), up to a final energy of 1.5 Joule at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. After recompressing the pulses to a minimum pulse duration of 25 fs, the pulse compressor's transmission efficiency limits peak power to 40 TW. These pulse durations necessitate an FWHM bandwidth of 40 nm and a central wavelength of 800 nm.

If these pulses are accurately focused in a vacuum chamber by off-axis paraboloid mirrors, peak intensities of up to 10²⁰ W/cm² are achievable. Currently two target chambers with a diameter of 50 cm and 85 cm, respectively, are being employed for experiments. They house the experimental setups for the investigation of laser-plasma interactions in the scope of laser-based electron- and ion acceleration, the generation of high-order surface harmonics, and the generation of secondary XUV and x-ray radiation. Due to the pulse properties of the generating laser radiation, all types of (particle) radiation generated are comparatively short-pulsed, and thus are available for advanced experiments with high brilliance.

A special feature of the JETI40 lab is its combination with a few-cycle probe beam available for pump-probe experiments  (25 fs/6 fs), enabling insights into laser–plasma interaction with previously unachieved temporal resolution.