54 J Pulses With 18 Nm Bandwidth From A Diode-Pumped Chirped-Pulse Amplification Laser System

We report on results from the fully diode-pumped chirped-pulse amplification laser system Polaris. Pulses were amplified to a maximum energy of 54.2 J before compression. These pulses have a full width at half-maximum spectral bandwidth of 18 nm centered at 1033 nm and are generated at a repetition rate of 0.02 Hz. To the best of our knowledge, these are the most energetic broadband laser pulses generated by a diode-pumped laser system so far. Due to the limited size of our vacuum compressor, only attenuated pulses could be compressed to a duration of 98 fs containing an energy of 16.7 J, which leads to a peak power of 170 TW. These pulses could be focused to a peak intensity of 1.3 x 10(21) W/cm(2). Having an ultra-high temporal contrast of 1012 with respect to amplified spontaneous emission these laser pulses are well suited for high-intensity laser-matter experiments. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America